1. Doctrine of the Upanishads and Early Buddhism Oldenberg MLBD (See Vedic Studies, Buddhism History, Buddhist Texts deepavamsa Folder)

HERMANN OLDENBERG

THE

DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

AND

THE EARLY BUDDHISM

Die Lehre der Upanishaden

Und die Anfänge des Buddhismus

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY

SHRIDHAR B. SHROTRI

MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PVT. LTD.

DELHI

First Edition: Delhi, 1991

© MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PVT. LTD.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 81-208-0830-4

Also available at:

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful to Mr. N.P. Jain, Director, Motilal Banarsi-

dass, Indological Publishers and Distributors, Delhi for giving me an

opportunity of translating this one more significant work of Hermann

Oldenberg.

My special thanks are due to Prof. G.S. Amur, retired Professor of

English, Marathwada University, Aurangabad and my friend Mr. Arya

Acharya for their selfless help in improving the English version.

"Rajanigandha",

2/1 Belgaum Road,

Dharwad-580 008

—Shridhar B. Shrotri

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

v

Introduction

1

Enquiry into the otherworldly order of things in the older Upaniṣads,

the later ones (Sāṃkhya) and Buddhism

1

Land and People. Brahmanā Caste

2

Chronological and Geographical Information 2. The Race,

Caste-System 3. A Brahmanā-pupil, His Relationship to His

Knowledge 4. Brahmanā's Pride in His Knowledge 5.

Science of Sacrifice

6

Pre-historical Background 6. The Vedic Gods 7. Personal

and Impersonal Entities 8. The Brāhmanā-texts 9. The

Magic Property in the Sacrifice 10. Powers in Nature, in

Human Personalities, in the Veda 11. Style of Thinking Focused

on These Powers 12. Regulations Among Those Powers 13.

Death and the Otherworld

15

The Problem of the Otherworld; Intermingling of Older and

Newer Elements 15. The Re-Death 16. Karman 17. Immortality,

Deliverance 18.

References

20

Chapter I

The Older Upaniṣads

23

Cultic Influence of Thought, of "Worship" 23. Henotheism of

Impersonal World-powers 24. Focusing the Thinking on

Unity 24. Focusing the Desires on Unity 26. Mysticism 27.

The Brahman

28

Different Names of the Supreme Being 28. The Brahman, its

Ancient Concept 29. Brahman and Kṣatra 30. Related Con-

cepts Outside India 30. Elevation of Brahman to the Highest

Esteem 31.

The Ātman

33

Ātman and Breath 33. Ātman the Self 34. The Universal

Ātman 34.

viii

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

CONTENTS

ix

Brahman and Ātman Made Identical

The Prose-Hymn of the Śāṇḍilya 36.

The Absolute and its Relation to the World

The Problem of Unity and Plurality 37. The One "All"-animating 38. Positive and Negative Expressions. The "No, no" 39. The One All-"animating" 41. Infinitely Big and Infinitely Small 44. The Inner Driving Force, Origin of Values 46. The World-Creator 48. Remaining Also in the Reality of Many Besides the One 51. Identity of the One and the Many 52. Plurality Explained as Appearance? 54.

The Absolute in Itself. Personality or Impersonality

The Absolute Not Merging with the World 58. Uncertainty About the Alternatives Between Personality and Impersonality 60. Impersonal Features 61. Personal Features 62.

Metempsychosis. Karman

Different Forms of the Doctrine of Metempsychosis 63. The Karman. Moral Retribution 65.

Merit of Existence

The World Judged as Pervaded by Brahman 68. The World Judged as Different from Brahman. Pessimism 69. Death and the Other Evils 69. The Character of the Indian Pessimism 73.

Deliverance

Relationship Between the Universal and the Individual Self 74. Deliverance Through Knowledge and Not Through Works 76. Can the Absolute be Known? 78. Desirelessness 79. The Nature of the Process of Deliverance 80. The Earthly Existence of the Redeemed. Śramaṇahood 81. The Beginnings of Yoga 83. Egoism in the Ideal of Deliverance 84. Death of the One Who is Redeemed 84. Doubts About the Character of Hope in Immortality 86.

The Literary Form of the Upaniṣads

Plurality of Upaniṣads. Their Affiliation to the "Forest Texts" 87. Composers. List of Teachers. Vedic Schools 88. Consisting of Brief Text-Pieces 89. Larger Compositions 90. Upaniṣad in its Narrower Sense (Text of "Worship") 91. Dialogues 94. Their External Form, Participating Persons 94. Emergence of Princes? 97. Beings Which Are Not Human Beings 98. Portrayal of the Emerging Thinkers 99. Technique of the Dialogue 100. The Nature of

This Prose 104. Individual Catchwords 106. Similes 106. Riddles 108. Verses 109.

In Retrospect

Upaniṣads Between the Older and the Later Period 111. The Supreme Being and the World: Significance of Their Antithesis 111. In Relation to Kant and Christian Mysticism 113. Brahmanahood and Śramaṇahood 116.

References

117

Chapter II

The Later Upaniṣads and the Beginnings of Sāṃkhya and Yoga

The Later Upaniṣads 131. Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad. The Naciketas Dialogue 131. Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad 133.

The Beginnings of Sāṃkhya-System

Relationship with the Older Speculation in General 134. The Name Sāṃkhya 134. Kapila and the Other Philosophers 135. The Upaniṣads and the Epic as Sources 135. Dualism 137. The Material Fundamental Principle (Prakṛti) 137. The Three Guṇas 138. The Spiritual Principle (Puruṣa) 143. Evolution of Prakṛti 144. Puruṣa and Prakṛti 149. Obligations of the Puruṣa 152. Deliverance 154. Retrospect and Prospects for Further Development 156. Materialisation of Intellectual Happening 157. Materialisation of Suffering 158. Plurality of Puruṣa 160. The Deliverance in the Later Form of the Doctrine; Prakṛti Doing Her Work for the Puruṣa 162.

The Yoga

The Beginnings of Yoga 164. Discipline of the Breath, Body Postures, Mastering the Senses 165. Meditations 167. Fruits of Yoga: Miraculous Powers 168. Deliverance 169. Theoretical Principles. Relation to Sāṃkhya 170. Nirvāṇa 171. Position of the Yoga in the Spiritual Development of India 172.

A Personal God. The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad

References

178

Chapter III

The Early Buddhism

Brahminism and Buddhism 185. Geographical Relation of Buddhism to the Upaniṣads 185. Chronological Relation to the Older Upaniṣads; Historical Advances 186. Chronological Relation to the Later Upaniṣads 189. Buddha's Environment.

x

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Sophism, Pyrrhonism 190. Buddha Rejects Purely Theoretical

Knowledge 191. Influence of Sāṃkhya? Buddhistic Evidences

on It 192. Are There Inner Correlations? 193. The Buddhistic

Dualism between “What is Conformed” and “What is not

Conformed” 193. Position with Respect to Ātman 195.

Dominance of Causality in the World 196. Super-mundane

Being 197. “Substrata” 202. Relationship between the World

and the Supermundane 203. Sāṃkhya as a Preliminary Stage

of this Buddhistic Dualism 204. Relationship between

Buddhism and Yoga 207.Independent Creations of Buddhism

in the Realm of the Doctrine 213. In the Realm of Religious

Life 215. The Figure of Buddha 216.

References

219

Index

223

POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE OF PĀLI AND BUDDHIST STUDIES

(University of Ceylon)

No. 9, Gower Street,

COLOMBO 5.

INTRODUCTION

ENQUIRY INTO THE OTHERWORLDLY ORDER

OF THINGS IN THE OLDER UPANIṢADS,

THE LATER ONES (SĀMKHYA) AND BUDDHISM

An enquiry into the otherworldly order of things behind and beyond this

world, the related problems of death and everything that comes after death

has seriously occupied the minds of the Indian thinkers from very ancient

times. We endeavour to describe here a few phases, which form a natural

homogeneous unit, of the history of these thoughts.

They begin where the chaos of ancient concepts of life in the world and

happenings clears up. These concepts emerge mostly from the primitive past,

paving the way for the powerful idea of the Brahman, the Supreme Being.

Here emerges, beside the hope of joyful afterlife in the company of divine

world-rulers, an outsoaring longing for departing into the peaceful quietude

of eternity.

This stage of development exists in those older texts which are attributed

to the Veda and which are called ‘Upaniṣads’.

Upaniṣads of later origin reveal the same thoughts in a progressive deve-

lopment. The pressing questions of the relationship of the Brahman to the

world appearing to the naked eye are heeded with greater attention. We find

here the oldest, Vedic form of the Sāṃkhya-doctrine. The philosophical con-

templation of the Indians has created for the first time a system in it. When

the times of the Vedic antiquity had already run their course, this system was

moulded into a modern form by the sophisticated science of India which had

now gathered strength and knew how to describe astutely and artistically

complicated structures of thoughts as in Pāṇini’s grammar. New motifs were

skilfully interwoven. In this way, the Sāṃkhya-doctrine, it may be said,

acquired a classical form. We shall be failing in our duty if we do not, at least,

cast a glance at it.

But even before the aforesaid course of events took place in the close

circles of philosopher-thinkers, there developed creations of an altogether

different kind in the other environs of the same nuclei. The philosophemes

gave a foundation which was strong enough to bear the burden of mighty

religious creations. Buddha appeared on the scene bringing with him the

solace of his doctrine to those tormented by the misery of life and the fear of

death. He promised deliverance from suffering and death and an entry into

the mysterious otherworld of Nirvāṇa. It should be our endeavour to examine

the doctrine of the most ancient Buddhism in the light of its association with

those works which preceded it.

2

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Let us pause with our description for a while. It will not take in its pur-

view the philosophical systems merging later with a movement now firmly

established, nor the later religions of India, those of Viṣṇu, Kṛṣṇa or Śiva.

It is also not our intention to strive for perfection within the confines of our

limits. We will rather be attempting to understand the basic dialectical motifs

with which the old thinking worked, their coordination and their develop-

ment. We would also like to understand the predominant mental exigencies

and dispositions here. We shall further attempt to bear in mind the serious

and often bizarre personalities of thinkers, who feeling strong and in a mood

of renunciation, could feel that they were victors in their struggle to lift the

veil from the otherworld and to overcome death.

Can one succeed "among books and papers" in a room into which looks

the pale sky of the north, in cogitating upon the thoughts deliberated in the

blazing heat of the Indian sun or in the downpour of the Indian rain, near

sacrificial places of the villages or in the huts of the ascetics, under the wide

canopy of leaves of mighty trees? Thoughts whose main features were carved

out in a past, when so much was alive of the strange, shapeless phantoms of

pre-historic fantasies, and so little of thoughtfully probing and plainly and

ingeniously constructive sciences? Difficulties as they must have been faced

by the researchers of Plato, appear here with quite a different force. A histori-

cal continuity leading to our intellectual life helping to bridge even more

negligible distances, is altogether missing here. These thoughts, as if excava-

ted from the depths of the earth, appear before us abruptly, and they are quite

baffling. And suddenly, familiar features appear to be looking at us again.

We should not try to conceal their faults. But at many a point, we feel like

bowing our head before them in reverent silence.

LAND AND PEOPLE. BRAHMANA CASTE

Chronological and Geographical Information

In what particular era did the developments of thinking occupying our

mind begin? Of course, this cannot be definitely ascertained, since the entire

older chronology of India is totally dark. Hypothetical estimation may lead

us to the times around the beginning of the pre-Christian millennium.1 The

geographical locale, as it can be explained from the history of origin and

spread of the Vedic culture, is situated wholly in northern India: mainly in

the fertile lands on the banks of the two sister-rivers, Gaṅgā and Yamunā.

But soon the movement begins to force its way to the east beyond the conflu-

ence of these two rivers. We may have in our mind the higher classes of Aryan

Indians, assumed to have immigrated from Iran—perhaps a millennium

before—as yet not being too deeply affected by miscegenation with the des-

pised dark aborigines of the land. Even today, Brahmanas of pure or almost

pure fair type have continued to exist. Thus, with respect to racial character,

the Brahmanas of that age still resembled their relatives: the Iranian priests

3

INTRODUCTION

who experienced, perhaps at the same time, the Zoroastrian reform. And yet,

the difference between the Indian intellectual and spiritual character and

that of the Iranians was obviously sufficiently pronounced. The nature, the

climate of India, their easy domination over the aboriginal people, and the

absence of great historical battles, spread around the Brahmanas an atmos-

phere of undisturbed peace. This helped the blossoming of a penchant for

contemplation, cultivation of complicated knowledge, for play of unrestrained

imagination which indulged again and again in the dreadful and the

monstrous.

The Race. Caste-System

Above all, the insularity of the caste-system also operated in that direction.

Even in those days the regulations of the caste had begun to rule over the life

in India. The ideas we shall be discussing here had in them a tendency to free

themselves from caste barriers, but this liberal feature could not be effective

even from the beginning. The movement started, as it can be easily perceived,

just in the lap of the Brahmana-caste. These men were aware of the fact that

they were born at the beginning of things from the head of the Puruṣa, this

thousand-headed, thousand-footed primordial being. They wore their intellec-

tual dignity as if it were their patrimony as an integral part of their nature.

Wearing the holy thread, a mark of caste-identity, they went around in strange

hair-styles—a hair-conch on the right side or three hair-conches, or peculiarly

plaited hair and similar oddities—recognisable as members of a specific

Brahmana-generation whose ancestors had ‘seen’ the hymns of the Ṛgveda.

We cannot, of course, imagine the members of this caste, for the period under

consideration, as a completely homogeneous mass in their lifetime position

and their interests. There were rich gentlemen living a life of luxury. Thus

a Brahmana speaks in a text: “I have my share of gold, of cows, horses,

female slaves, of blankets and clothes”—or another to whom it is said, “All

sorts of things and in plenty are seen in your house: a rolling mule-cart, a

female slave, a golden neck-ornament; you eat food you like and see what

pleases your eye.” But there are also poor wretches like that Uṣasti who

roams about with his wife in a land devastated by hailstorm in utter misery

and begs from a rich man a little rice-gruel he saw him eating. There were

Brahmanas fully interested in mundane things. They were courtiers and land

owners. But yet the spirituality emerged ever stronger—we have every reason

to suppose it—perhaps predominantly, among the members of this caste: a

type of those Brahmanas who thought, as one old text says, “Waters go, the

sun goes, the moon goes, the stars go their way. How would it be, if these

deities were not to go their way, they were not to do their work: a Brahmana

is like that the day he does not study his text-lessons.” Here is a type of the

Brahmanas of the old stamp, described centuries later by a Buddhist poet:

"Those descending from a learned house, married to

sacred science"—

4

how even today the Brahmanas have not become remotely extinct, among

whom the ancient traditions of revered teaching and learning have been

preserved intact.

Thus in antiquity, care for knowledge was concern of these Brahmanas

named later by a Greek scholar as the philosopher-class. Even the mysterious

arts of ecstatic excitements were practised among them. They strove for

supernatural powers and communion with gods and spirits through fasting,

heating and other forms of austerities. But all that declined as they dwelled

more on the science of the Veda and sacrifice.

The learned spiritual person started his career as a teacher. The goal of

his ambition is revealed in the verse he recites to pray:

"Like the course of the rivers

Flowing to the ocean from east and west,

May a host of friends, of pupils,

Flow to me from east and west."

A Brahmana spent his youth in the house of such a teacher for long years.

The duty of begging and hard labour was incumbent upon the pupil. The

wilful poverty of his outward existence was in sharp contrast to the glory of

his spiritual possession. He subjected himself voluntarily to everything to

achieve this.

Man's relation to knowledge appeared at that time in a different light, and

therefore, acquiring knowledge was done in a much different way than in our

period, which is glutted with knowledge and which manipulates it in an

objective and businesslike fashion. Age-old conceptions step in here. As

the name of a creature is mystically connected with its image or its shadow,

similarly, its knowledge is mystically connected with the creature. Yet, the

saying that knowledge is power holds good here in another sense than in

Europe: it does not enable one to act correctly, as we understand it in Europe,

A Brahmana-pupil, His Relation to His Knowledge

"The pupil goes, roused by a burning wooden log,

Wrapped in a black buckskin, consecrated, long-bearded.

INTRODUCTION

5

In no time he roams from ocean to ocean, he covers

the worlds with his hand, uncovers them again."

He begins his apprenticeship with magic rites. Celibacy is a strict duty—not a

moral duty in Christian sense, but an element of magic—for the one in a

consecrated condition of “Brahmacarya”, i.e. of a pupillage. A pupil has to

follow all kinds of observances before he learns individual texts which are

effective under special circumstances. If he wants to study verses which grant

power over clouds and rain, he must wear black clothes—corresponding to

the colour of the clouds—and eat only black food. If he wishes to get into a

kind of alliance with the sun with the help of another text, he should not

allow anything to come between himself and the sun except trees and protec-

tive huts. The knowledge of such texts, in fact, generally all knowledge infused

with a specially dangerous sacredness, is not to be acquired in a village;

powers activated to acquire it could be harmful to man's everyday life. But

after a period of fasting and silence, the pupil goes out in a forest “to a serene

place in the north-eastern direction,4 illuminated from the east”. He receives

there, with his eyes closed and bound, knowledge which is infused with magic

power. He has to sit in a circular plane which is consecrated by sprinkling

water over it. A possession he looks forward to since long with expectation

and ardent desire. “The mothers say to the boys when they suckle them:

‘Grow up, O son, to be one of those people who know to take the Śakvarī

vow’.

Finally it is time for the growing Brahmana to take a holy bath : it washes

away the power or substance of the “Brahmacarya” from him and ends his

apprenticeship. Breaking away “from cows or from fruit-carrying trees” he

can now return to his native village. There is a text vividly describing a pupil

longing for this end. “He serves his (teacher's) sacrificial fire for twelve years.

The teacher allowed other pupils to go, but he did not allow him to go. Then

the teacher's wife said to her husband, ‘The pupil has struggled fervently. He

but it produces directly a mysterious nexus between the knower and the

known.5 It contains a kind of a direct magic power over the object of know-

ledge. But on the other hand, this same object may take revenge upon a

knower for his insufficient, wrong knowledge. Here it is not a question of

one's intellectual capacity of understanding, but of a capacity of being mysti-

cally equipped to harbour knowledge and of a defence from the dubious

powers inherent in it. Thus, teaching and learning move in a sacramental

atmosphere saturated with magic. An awe for the uncanny lies in the air. But

once one succeeds in invoking dangerous spirits, one obtains an incalculable

power in return as a knower.

looked after the fires nicely. Take care, they do not forget you and impart

instruction to him. You should impart it to him.’ He, however, went away

without teaching him. Then the pupil became ill, he had no desire to eat”—

then the fires, as the wife had foreseen it, taught him themselves: and now his

face glows like that of a knower. We have one more portrait of such a pupil

whose apprenticeship has come to an end. He belongs to a family in which

no one wanted to remain uneducated. As a twelve-year old boy he had left

far to study. As a twenty-four year old “he returns, after he had thoroughly

studied all Vedas. Arrogant, imagining himself to be learned, with a swollen

head”...

Brahmana's Pride in His Knowledge

Thirst for knowledge and pride in it, as they appear in these descriptions

of Brahmanic pupillage, accompany the Brahmana all through his life. It

6

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

concerns again and again the only science that existed in India at that time:

the knowledge and understanding of sacrifice and sacrificial texts. "The

wilderness of sacrifice" stretches through journeys of hundreds of days, and

an ignorant person trying to venture into it, feels like a traveller in a forest

attacked by hunger and thirst or evil spirits. One is accustomed—it often

appears petty and even worse—to connect occurrences of daily life, success

or failure, to the right or wrong sacrifices. Bhāllaveya has two verses supposed

to correspond to one another, chosen in two different verse-measures rather

than in one. He falls from the cart and breaks his arm. He is clever enough

to understand immediately the cause of the accident. A priest-opponent told

Yājñavalkya in advance, by his manner of performing a certain rite that his

life-breath would leave him. That was really inappropriate against a sacri-

ficial expert like Yājñavalkya. "He looked at his arm and said, 'These arms

have become grey with age. What has happened to the word of the

Brahmana?' " But it is not only in such magic effects where the power of

knowledge stands its test. It concerns realities which even a most ungodly

man cannot doubt. One reputed for his knowledge gets everywhere honour

and profit; his work as a sacrificial priest is generously rewarded by rich

masters of sacrifice. Rivalries arising inevitably are given vent in disputations

on sacrificial wisdom. They take place preferably in front of numerous

people—only Śūdras quarrel without any witness—; often a highly powerful,

completely personal language is used there. This is a prelude to those dispu-

tations about the mysteries of the Supreme Being we shall come across later.

Besides, it is not the human initiates alone who dispute with one another,

or exchange possession of the precious treasure of knowledge. It sounds

like a waft of fabulous poetry blowing at the moment in the prose of pedantic

priests, when one reads how a golden bird came flying to Keśin Dārbhya.

The learned bird says, "You do not understand what is sacrificial consecra-

tion. I understand it, and I shall explain it to you"…

SCIENCE OF SACRIFICE

Pre-Historical Background

As the initiates, so is their knowledge.

The science of sacrifice which consequently bequeathed many of its

characteristics to the doctrine of the Supreme Being is connected closely, as

mentioned earlier, with the thinking of a very distant past.

Its conceptions of things and happenings were extremely different from

what appears to the modern man as real, in fact, also only conceivable.

Something of a "pre-logical" mental state was mentioned.5 I am not dis-

puting here the full justification of this expression. But it does not of course

mean that the theology or metaphysics of Brahmanas themselves had still

remained on this pre-logical niveau. It was only on its way of distancing

itself from it and was yet to cover many wide stretches in different directions

7

INTRODUCTION

on this way. There are places where it does not do anything more than apply

that mode of ancient thinking to the sacrificial materials with which it is

concerned, and put a somewhat different, modernised sacrificial garb on the

primitive masses of concepts.

We get tc know the pre-historical world of thoughts at present better in

its vestiges preserved even today. Persons and things—different from one

another, more for us than for the ancients—show persistent qualities and

evolve effects which can be bestowed upon them only by an altogether

different mode of thinking than ours. One can understand indeed easily this

much that the heart of a bear or a bird of prey is eaten to become courageous,

that the brain-substance of an intelligent man is smeared on the forehead to

become intelligent: the essence of courage or wisdom, dwells in that heart or

brain; one imbibes it. Similar associations are conceivable, like the mystic

identity imagined between oneself, and say, a shadow or a creature, its foot-

prints or its name, so that one who grasps the one, grasps also the other. Or

effects like a right imitation of rain by a magician causes the real rain. The one

signifies the other. Both become identical. But often we succeed in finding

clues for our understanding in a far-fetched, roundabout way, or we do not

succeed at all; the connecting threads are hidden, sometimes hopelessly

concealed. If the wives of men con an elephant hunt cut their hair, the captured

elephants escape men (Laos, Indo-China). An epidemic was caused by a

photo of the Queen Victoria in possession of a missionary (New Gunea).6

Such belief in odd association between beings and their operation outside of

everything we can think of, get an intensive vivacity. With a perfect truism,

it becomes evident to the believer that a thing is at the same time itself and

something—in our understanding—completely different. There is a tribe

whose members totally believe that they are Araras. They have a conviction

that every individual is simultaneously a different man, woman and ancestor

from a fabulous past. But he is also at the same time a totem possessing the

essence of a type of a plant or an animal whose name he has. The spirit which

cannot separate itself as an individual from its surroundings does not also

lend firm and individual existence to the beings of the outer world. General

forces having an indefinite influence or substances fill the world with their

grotesque and capricious movement flowing along in such a way that one

reels, staggers and merges with the other. Of course, this is not a pantheism

conscious of its self. But it is indeed a pre-historical prelude to pantheism.

The Vedic Gods

All this can be mentioned here only briefly to give a background idea of

the Brahmanic sacrificial speculation. Very gradually—it is to a great extent

only in the future for the times we shall be discussing—do those mists begin

to clear, and one learns to see the real instead of the imaginary. First of all,

even much before the development of the Brahmanic speculation, figures of

great gods had acquired a powerful significance amidst that primordial world

of ideas: mighty individuals, similar to human beings, even super-human

beings. Most of them are embodiment of natural forces.

There is Indra, originally, apparently a Storm-god, a dipsomaniac media-

tor, vanquisher of enemies. Agni—the fire—, a divine friend and a great guest

of humanity. Varuṇa—a Moon-god—in the pre-historic period, as one may

suppose—, a god who saw through the most hidden sins and punished the

sinners. The effective means of assuring oneself of the mercy of these gods

are prayer and sacrifice, closely connected with one another. In this prayer

and sacrifice,—to express at least the main idea of the Vedic sacrifice—man

gives to god so that He gives back, He saves and protects. The great work of

the “Ṛṣis”, the priest-poets, who appeared in the early beginnings of the

Indian history, was to organise a splendid sacrifice and to “hammer out”

artistic prayer for it. With ingenious hymns, they taught how to prepare an

altar for Agni, press the inebriating Soma for Indra, celebrate his victory

over the dragon Vṛtra, implore away Varuṇa's wrath.

The element of personality which was declining in human life and in

religious practices began to celebrate its triumph in these gods.

Of course, it was never an undisputed triumph, much less a decisive one.

Indra, Agni and their likes get really a prominent place in the most ancient

of the Indian texts, viz., the Hymns of the Ṛgveda. However, it should not be

overlooked that according to the nature of this hymnic poetry only the trend

of turning to the personal gods for mercy can assert itself among different

approaches in which religious exigency is expressed. But on the other hand,

a tendency is also seen in the Ṛgveda where the contours of those divine

individualities are blurred to reveal in them an impersonal god:

“Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa and Agni.

He is called, a Bird of heaven.

The One, the priests call Him by many names.

He is called Agni and Yama, He is called Mātariśvan.”

Personal and Impersonal Entities

The importance of personal entities seems to be diminishing when one

looks beyond the Hymns of the Ṛgveda to the Yajurveda, the Veda of the

sacrificial mantras. We come across there constantly the work of the priests.

This work, within the sacrifice and yet independent of the basic idea of the

sacrifice, ignores gods and wooing for their mercy and adheres in principle

to the sphere of the pre-godly point of view. When a priest grips a fire-brand

during the sacrificial tasks, he transfers his influence to the fire by saying,

“Destroyed is the evil enemy, destroyed is the ill-will.” Moving up and down

on the sacrificial place, he says, “I wander towards the wide air-region.” Or

in other situations, turning to different implements or various sacrificial

offerings, “Go to the heaven, cause rain for us”—“I push the wide air-region;

I push the wide air-region between you, O Heaven and Earth (to stay you

apart).” Thus while the priest invokes the help of gods in the hymns, these

sacrificial mantras show that he independently controls the powers in nature,

manipulates heaven and earth and chases away evil powers with fire. Besides

the great sacrifices, there are numerous smaller rites for marriage, funeral

and various occasions of everyday life: the priest constantly acts in these or

instructs the layman taught by him to perform, in the same style of the pre-

historic period. He lets a woman step on a stone to impart her firmness; he

asks the man desiring swiftness inherent in the fish to eat fish; he prepares

an image of rain so that it rains.7 In all these, he is positively not a servant

of gods; we can call him a magician.

And this trend pointing towards magic and not the trend of worship of

gods is further seen in the first and the succeeding generations of Brahmanas.

These found sacrificial arrangements and prayers in a finished form, and

consequently, it was now their duty to explain all this in their own way to

secure the full power in the hands of a knower.

Here we have reached a point where the Brahmanic science of sacrifice

demands our attention as a foundation and a breeding ground for the great

pantheistic speculation.8

The Brāhmaṇa-texts

The “Brāhmaṇas” are unpredictably monotonous: these are the works

in which the sacrificial science is recorded. Hundreds and thousands of

observations like the following are read there. It is said on the litany of the

“fork-thill” recited in the Soma sacrifice for seven deities or group of deities:

“This litany of the ‘fork-thill’ truly belongs to the power of breath. He

recites the texts addressed to seven deities. Seven are the breath-powers in

the head. With that he puts the breath-powers into the head. What good or

bad one says of the sacrificial master depends upon the priest who recites the

litanies for him. Here he can do with him what he likes. If he wants to harm

him in his exhalation, then he must recite the section on Vāyu (Wind-god)

in a confused manner. He must leave out a verse, or a part of the verse: that

would confuse this (piece of litany). Thus he harms him while exhaling. If

he wants to harm him while inhaling and exhaling, then he must recite the

section on Indra and Vāyu in a confused manner”, etc.

Another passage concerns a series of sacrifices which are performed

throughout the year; they give an opportunity to deal with the secret nature

of the year so that one as a knower of this mystery becomes master of powers

and influences connected with it: “A man is verily the year. ‘Man’ is a thing.

‘Year’ is a thing. They are the same. Days and nights are two entities of the

year; there are two breath-powers of man (inhaling and exhaling). They are

but the same ... Four-syllabled is samvatsara (“Year”), four-syllabled is this

yajamāna (“Sacrificial master”). They are but the same ... Three hundred and

sixty are the nights of the year; three hundred and sixty are man’s bones.

They are but the same ... As many perspiration holes there are, so many

10

drops does it rain ... Thus spoke Vārkaḷi who knew this: I know the cloud

which brings rain to the earth, and this drop of rain.'9

The Magic Property in the Sacrifice

All this has very little to do with the gods to whom these litanies and

sacrifices are customarily addressed. Their life came readily to them from the

belief that they are masters of all goods, of all happenings, give happiness or

sorrow as they like it. But the priestly pride speaking from the Brāhmaṇa-texts

does not like to receive in submissive humility from the hand of a higher one.

And the priest's thirst for knowledge cannot be fully quenched, as long as

he must halt before an unreducable final which confronts him in those

personalities of gods. In volition as in knowledge, one jumps at the opp-

ortunity more confidently and more fastidiously. One comprehends the

happening as done by pre-historical conception of the world in the most

primitive form as based on a power game ruling the universe, and the knower

understands how to reckon and guide the mechanism of powers as he likes.

This mechanism resembles from distance the law of nature of the modern

view of the world. The course of things are even controlled through a sacrifice

which now gets a new meaning. It becomes a mighty magic. If someone

succeeded, he was asked: what trick did he use in the sacrifice to achieve this?

Essence, form, importance of things depend upon a sacrifice. With Bacca-

laureus of Goethe a sacrificer could say, "I lead the sun out of the ocean"—he

not only could say it, he actually did say it: "The sun certainly would not rise,

if one were not to pour this libation to him (the sun). That is why, he pours

this libation." Therefore, Indra and Varuṇa could get here only a shadow of

their former greatness. It is priests, also in India, who have deprived gods of

their life-force. The aura of poetry and devotion surrounding them in the

old hymns has disappeared from them in the Brāhmaṇa-texts. Where they

appear here doing something, they were used to work with petty ranks against

one another or against their enemies who are not gods. They are timid, evil,

full of base greediness. Of course, they have to allow this situation to happen

and tolerate being systematized, reinterpreted in accordance with the views

valid at present, so to say, of being translated into the language of new times.

God Bṛhaspati is the Brahman, a power of sacredness. Viṣṇu is sacrifice. The

ideas in which the thinking now likes to dwell are grossly and forcefully

carried into their myths. The ancient hymns spoke with a solemn vivacity of

that great moment of decision when Indra hurled the thunderbolt at Vṛtra.

Now it is said that Indra killed Vṛtra with the help of a sacrificial offering.

Now the metres of sacred hymns instead of the mythical eagle fly into the

heights to fetch down the divine drink Soma from the heaven. Absurd blend

of heterogeneous series of ideas without style: no wonder that thus the most

perfect mythologically speculative monstrosities are born.

Finally one gets accustomed to the great forces of the outer world being

named "deities" beside the ancient gods and in their place. They are physical

11

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

and similar entities, sometimes more fantastic colossals, sometimes more

fluids and substances in which one sees now, above all, factors which

determine the happening.

Powers in Nature, in Human Personalities, in the Veda

There are the sun and the moon. The three worlds: earth, air and heaven.

The world-regions. The year and the seasons, the months with their halves of

increasing and decreasing light, days and nights. Perhaps we would expect

to come across in this list space and time. Obviously, they are in the minds of

ancient thinkers in a particular way which they name as "world-regions" and

the "year". On the whole, one has not penetrated those pure forms of con-

ception which are only forms. One adheres mostly to these concrete ideas of

world-regions and of the year which imply the living substance of a diversity

equipped with different powers and of the temporal and spatial elements

working differently in the world-life—particularly in sacrifice—.10

A special group of entities to which the Brāhmaṇa-texts have given an

important role along with those "deities" are the substances. The corporeal

and mental existence of human personality is composed of them. There is

mind, breath and speech, or in the place of breath, a plurality of breath-

powers. There is food; then water, bones and marrow, eye and ear belonging

to the body.

But it is quite significant that there is a third sphere, equally entitled,

besides the spheres of macrocosm and microcosm. It is the sphere of sacrifice

with its cycle of individual chores which go with it, and above all, with the

sacred Vedic texts. These texts give the details of the wording and verse-

measures. They reveal different forms of artistic repetitions and restrictions of

the verse-structures in the composition of the song-liturgies, down to such

minutiae like the use of this or that sound at some point, or the change in the

case of a catchword in sacred formulas. Interesting beginnings of grammatical

observation are occasionally visible here. It is seen how distinctly the peculia-

rity of the priestly conception of the world is revealed: metres of the sacred

hymns rule along with the sun and the moon, the breath and the mind, as

great powers over the course of things in the world. It is said in one of the

Brāhmaṇas: "All this is there: sacred hymns, mantras, songs, metres,

sacrifices, human beings and cattle."

Finally, as it occasionally emerged in what is said so far in this welter of

mystic and magic substances, there is a place also for all that appeared to us as

a quality of a being or as a power inherent in it. There are also "bodies"

(tanū):11 say, in a wife who is endowed with harmful qualities of a "husband-

killing body", or of a "body of sonlessness". The power which makes a

priest or a nobleman what he is, is similarly represented: Brahman and

Kṣatra.

12

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Style of Thinking Focused on These Powers

And in all this, it is unmistakably seen that the thinking has advanced

from the pre-historic forms and has become more genuine and real. The

world-regions, the year and similar powers, even sacrifice and sacrificial

hymns carry indeed, as rulers of happening, a stamp of a conception which is

superior to the one of the distorted figures of pre-historic times. And yet what

the thinking of Brahmanas sees in these entities and the events it allows to

take place among them: all this falls back constantly into the style of grotesque

unreality, a style which is characteristic of the pre-historic times. This is not

amazing, because these priests had been complete magicians. The verse-

measures speak and act. The year has a desire. A sacrifice metamorphoses

into a tortoise and speaks. A great deal of swaying between impersonal and

personal—shadowy personal—existence. Nets of fantastic and arbitrary

connections spin a web around all these creations from whose action the

structure of sacrifice, its effect on the course of life in the world and the ego

should be explained. They influence one another through touch, through the

number inherent in them, through something that clings to them. They are

afraid of one another, they depend upon one another, go into one another.

They are closely interwoven with one another and they associate themselves

with one another as pairs. They create one another while the one releases the

other from oneself. They take again one another into one another, absorb

one another, blow away into one another, becomes another, is the form of the other. And finally: the one is the other.

These theologians still possess quite a strong remnant of the old gift of the

pre-historic period to feel that something is at the same time something else

as an immediate assurance (p. 7f. above). Sacrifice is the year. It is the speech.

It is cattle. Eye is the truth. The verse-measure Triṣṭubh is power. It is difficult

to estimate definitely the identity of equations which are expressed in such

sentences. Compared with the symbolizing combinations known to us—

crescent moon and Islam, bay and fame—it appear hardly doubtful that it

is there a question of an essentially stronger feeling of real identity. A person

for whom the bread of the supper does not signify the body of the Lord, but

is the body itself, may feel today something similar.

The figures in which the elements of this conception of the world comply

with one another go on changing continuously. An individual whirls here and

there, is now this, now that. Brackets holding together everything in their

mutual position, or rather, not holding together, are weak. One feels comforta-

ble with the evidence that one is the other—as far as such evidence has been

tried at all—. “The Fire-altar that has been erected is this speech.”12 This conclusion is drawn quite in the style of pre-

historic logic. “What has become is the Self. For, it is certain, what has

become, and it is also certain what is Self.” It would mean that one would not

be able to succeed in keeping two ideas separated from one another, once they

are found in a certain mutual proximity. If association of numbers is active

13

INTRODUCTION

in one's consideration, then one subscribes also to the principle that it does

not matter whether it is one or two, or one makes a deliberate mistake while

calculating. One often likes to take up quite negligible similarities between

words to conclude about the identity of two entities or the mystic power in

them: one takes into account the ancient idea of mystically essential commu-

nion between names and a thing named to acknowledge the strong conviction

possessed by such a proof. indha is indra, dhūrvā is dūrvā. Of course, better it

is, if the similarity between the words is tricky; it is just “hidden”; but the

gods like what is “hidden”. Thus terminologies, numbers and words are

thrown about unrestrained according to one's liking. Man likes to grant

“this everything” to an entity said to be effective: why should he restrict him-

self to a limit when limitlessness is easily at his disposal? When Prajāpati,

son of the world-creator Prajāpati had offered the full moon and the new

moon sacrifice, “a wish came to his mind: ‘May I be this everything’”. He

became water. Water is verify this everything”—and a few lines later: the

breath is this everything; the speech is this everything; the enjoyer of food and

the food itself are everything. A conception of the world in which everything

drifts into everything lends the right atmosphere which the priestly magic

needs, so that it can stalk the things and grasp and force the one in the other

from afar. The thought does not have to exert itself and fight a heavy battle to

conquer the obstacles blocking its entrance into the very core of things in

getting the knowledge through which it is reached. But it is similar to what it

was in the pre-historic times: whenever a question arose, its answer was soon

ready even without searching for it. In the peaceful seclusion of the privileged

caste, exposed to no other criticism than the one working similarly, least

troubled by self-criticism, one lets the fantasy play its game from one brain-

wave to another brainwave in accordance with one's free will and pleasure.

Regulations Among Those Powers

It is of course natural that certain regulations were established more or

less definitely, in the welter of those world-filling powers ruling over the way

of the world before the eyes of the priestly observers. A very primitive and

common type of classification in the pre-historic stage of development is the

division of the various creatures similar to the social grouping of human

beings. Animals, plants, heavenly bodies, world-regions—everything is classi-

fied according to totem-groups, clans, fraternities of human society. A magi-

cian belonging to the social group Mallera in Australia can use objects in his

magic called only Mallera; if he dies, the wood of the frame upon which his

corpse is kept must come from a tree of Mallera class.13 A clear illustration

how this thinking compared with the European sees in persons and things

other characteristic features and finds them important enough to build upon

them fundamental classifications and rules for action. And exactly, similar

thinking also appears in the Brahmanic sacrificial practices. There are the

same castes among gods and animals as among human beings. The Brahmanic

14

imagination would miss something essential, if this division did not comprise

also the same metres of the sacred texts, the melody and order of the song-

litanies. Also the seasons and the numbers decisive for the metres are asso-

ciated with the system. What is Brahmana among men, is Agni among gods,

the he-goat among the cattles, and among the verse-measures, the one consis-

ting of eight-syllabled lines. All these have among themselves the same

characteristics. All these are born out of the head of the world-creator. So

also, the nobles, the Vaiśya, Śūdra, born in that order, from the breast

and arms, from the belly, from the feet of the creator, have their counter-

parts of similar origin in the other spheres of existence. That the Brahmana

boy should receive the consecration on his entry into puberty between eighth

and sixteenth year is based on this classification. For eight is the number of

his class. For the same reason, the noble and the Vaiśya, it is respectively

between eleventh and twentysecond, and between twelfth and twentyfourth.

Similarly, the Brahmana lights his sacred fire in spring, the season of his

caste, the nobleman in summer, etc., etc. This has, of course, not come down

directly in this form from the primordial period, for neither the castes, nor

the verse-measures decisive for the correlation of numbers—and finally, not

even the gods—are ancient. But one can hardly doubt that the thinking habit

preserved in an uninterrupted continuity from the distant depths of the pre-

historic past has been applied to the matter brought forth by the pre-historic

period.

The classification just discussed above is educative, mainly for the assess-

ment of the relationship of the Brahman-speculation with that pre-history.

Another division of the sphere of the world commonly encountered has a

direct and considerable importance for a question before us, i.e. how the

idea of the Supreme Being became imminent in this speculation. The figures,

according to which some of the creatures filling the world are classified, are

placed next to one another as examples recurring in different spheres of exis-

tence, corresponding mutually in several of them, with constantly repeated

catchwords like particularly often the following: “Thus in relation to the

deities. Now in relation to the Self.” And also often: “Now in relation to the

sacrifice”: the same relation, the same event, manifests itself in about one-

third of the phenomenal forms—this was already mentioned above on p.

10—corresponding here and there.14 The “deities” mentioned there are not,

as a rule, supposed to be Agni, Indra and their companions, but also those cos-

mic rather than mythical beings we have come across earlier (pp.10-11).

They are elevated to the rank of “deities”. Prajāpati, the world-creator creates

three ritualistic forms considered as “three oceans”: foundation of the mystic

fire-altar, the song-litany Mahāvrata and the hymn-litany Mahaduktha. They

are world-ground, air-region and heaven. “Thus in relation to the deities.

Now in relation to the Self”: those three mysteries are mind, breath and

spęch. Those are the rites aimed at a universal symbolism from the beginning,

rites introduced by the crafty priest-technicians along with the old, compara-

tively simpler, sacrifices. They are specially suited to be covered by schematic

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

15

lines of such figures. These statements may appear purely playful if they are

observed in detail. But a tendency is seen in them which is of great impor-

tance for the whole development of the thought. The welter of powers filling

the world begins to fit in a way with the consciousness of the Brahmanas.

Great realms into which they dispersed soon began to separate themselves

from one another and get synchronized again in a mystical identity: from the

outer world to the human personality. In addition, the sphere of sacrifice and

the Veda appeared as the third equally entitled realm for the priestly observer.

When Prajāpati, the world-creator, “looked around among all beings, he saw

all beings in threefold knowledge.15 For here is the Self of all metres, all

forms of priest-songs, all breath-powers, all deities.” And then the creator

discharges “his Self which has become his semen as if in a womb. It consists

of metres, forms of the priest-songs, the breath-powers, all deities.” So he

becomes the Self of all beings. And so it happens to the sacrificer, and what

the creator has experienced is experienced by him. “He who knows this, on

departing from this world, reaches that Self which consists of metres, of

forms of the priest-songs, of the breath-powers, of all deities. He becomes

the one consisting of this, and he climbs to the heights, he who thus knowingly

performs that (sacrificial) work, or he who knows it thus.” It is seen in such

expressions how these realms of existence of the outer world (of “the deities”),

of the personal being, the sacrifice or of the Veda merge with one another,

and their varied contents are concentrated in a single point. And the conclu-

ding words of the references cited above show how this whole all-embracing

wealth is there in the otherworld to be awarded or rather to be discharged in

one’s essence, who knows the art of acquiring it: it is the sacrificer, the knower.

With this we have referred to the last question occupying our mind about

the Indian sacrificial wisdom. What does it teach us about death and the

otherworld?

INTRODUCTION

DEATH AND THE OTHERWORLD

The Problem of the Otherworld; Intermingling of Older and Newer Elements

The problem of the otherworld is frequently discussed in the Brāhmaṇa-

texts. It is treated more often and in greater detail than in the old poetry of

the Ṛgveda. Was it only because that the carousal of the Soma-sacrifice, the

praise of the dipsomaniac gods gave little reason to speak of those gloomy

realms? Well, it can be questioned. But it was likely that they were now given

more attention. Man was now more accustomed to thinking, even in a fanciful

manner, of the laws of the world and the structure of human personality. Its

effect might have been that he contemplated more and more, besides the

wishes and needs of today and tomorrow, the ultimate decisions about the

otherworldly features of human existence. How brief did the span of life in

this world appear compared with those eternities. “There are more nights

there”, it was said.

16

The concepts inherited from the past emerged here, as with the other

peoples, from the fundamentals of thoughts which were now developed. It

was obvious that there was an intermingling and superimposition of older

and newer elements in these concepts: like the belief in a prolonged ghost-

like existence of the soul wandering around its old living place, in an empire

of the "Fathers" ruled by Yama, besides belief in climbing the heavenly

heights, in the company of gods. But the man was not in a hurry to go there;

the life on earth was sufficiently enjoyable. And on the opposite side of such

heavenly bliss, there were frightful punishments in the darkness of the hell.

On the other hand, the denial of any continuation of existence beyond death

had not been unknown to this age. An Upaniṣad says later: "Many believe

that the dead exist, many believe that they do not." Different views about

the otherworld have got mixed up in the Brāhmaṇa-texts, and, as it can be

understood, no attempt has been made to counterbalance their contradictions.

There is also a talk about the tormented dead, who, in their confusion or as a

punishment for some fault, search in vain the correct path. "Many do not

know to find their abode. Confused by the fire (of cremation), dazed by smoke,

they do not find their abode." "He who spills the blood of a Brahmana", it is

said, "does not know the world of the Fathers for as many years as the number

of dust particles wetted by blood".

The Re-Death

Further, we do not know for sure whether a completely new16 element is

added to these and similar concepts running helter skelter. It points at a

direction that was meant to lead to a decisive modification of the belief in the

otherworld. It is of course not sure whether the relevant concept before us in

a priestly version has emanated from the thinking of the Brahmanic circles.

Nothing appears to rule out a possibility that it concerns a local popular

belief gaining a priestly style in the tradition. A catchword one does not come

across in the ancient texts appears now and is repeatedly expressed: the Re-

death. The "Fathers", the dead are also mortal. Repetition of the destined

death threatens them in the otherworld, in fact, of an unforeseen return of

recurring new deaths.17 "Those who thus know it, or who accomplish this

work"—this is said of a certain rite and the knowledge of its meaning—"reach

through death their new existence: the existence they reach is immortality.

But those who do not know and do not complete this work, reach through

death a new existence: they become again and again his (Yama's) food."

As a matter of fact, the idea of re-death current in many forms and among

many folks, is not particularly alien. Crossing over to the kingdom of death

is hitherto understood in the Veda as being born in this kingdom: "when he

dies and they lay him on the funeral pyre: and when he reaches existence from

there, then he is born for the third time".18 The one born thus is exposed in

that world to all sorts of fates. Why should there not be also dying in this

existence in which one is born?

17

INTRODUCTION

Karman

But how is this re-dying of the one who is born to be understood better?

Does he remain re-dying in the kingdom of death so that the re-death is only

a catastrophe taking place in the same otherworldly existence? Is it a renewed

breaking of pains of death, something like a repeated loss of a dear possession,

snapping off of the usual connections? Or, as death had led one from the

earthly world into the world of Fathers, does re-death lead one from the world

of Fathers into other worlds, or perhaps back into the earthly existence?19 The

sources of this are really sparse. On the whole, the first of these two ideas

appears to be predominant. "He who crosses over into that world without

being freed from this death...is killed again and again by him (i.e. the Sun-

god introduced here as death)" : thus the otherworld is always the scene of

every repetition of death. So the "Fathers" are not seldom characterised as

"turned away once for all" (from earthly existence). But on the contrary, there

is also a different conception. It speaks quite explicitly in a text of the call

svāhā ("Hail!") at the end of the formulas for offering oblations. This call

signifies an end. But for the knower, the end must turn into the best: "The

spring verily arises rejuvinated from the winter. This comes into existence

from that. Thus he who knows this, verily comes into existence again in this

world." Thus there is not only a new dying after death, but there can also be—

obviously after such dying—a return to an earthly existence.20 And in another

text, there is a talk about the protection of Fathers and also of cattle from the

re-death. This can only mean that the animal existence is also included apart

from the human in the great movement of dying and re-birth. This could be

connected with the primitive ideas of the human soul entering the animals.21

Of course, the later system of metempsychosis is not present in a finished

form in such isolated expressions. But it is seen how new elements emerge

within the ancient belief in the otherworld, like crossing over to the world of

Fathers, yet without nullifying the ancient belief. Or perhaps, the existing

elements get a new importance. An orientation to a later dogma is clearly

recognised in these elements.

The later period has developed, as it is known, a doctrine of "Karman"

from very ancient concepts of the otherworldly retribution. It concerns the

decision about the path man should take from one existence to the other.

Depending upon the merits and demerits of man's works, he attains a higher

or a lower, a blissful or an agonising existence and remains in such existence

till the Karman has been fully enjoyed or atoned for. It appears, we might

have already alluded to this idea also or an idea similar to it. Thus it is said of

the person who knows a certain rite: "Days and nights do not drink in that

world his treasures deposited there. He goes to his treasures there that have

not been drunk."22 What can these "treasures" be other than the treasures of

good work? They await him who comes there, and the knower may enjoy

them there undiminished by inimical power.

First of all, this whole sphere of ideas is obviously independent of the

18

movement of thoughts working towards the idea of the Supreme Being, even though the connecting lines resulting so easily were naturally drawn between the two in the ensuing period. Somberness prevails in the perspectives opening up now more and more visibly. Unforseeable new resolves, new dangers; the word "re-death" throws its shadows on everything from the beginning. The thoughts and worries of the souls prone to fear are focused on the future more urgently and more painfully, as if one were sure of ending all uncertainties by a single decision.

Immortality, Deliverance

But how should the priestly art not find a rescue from these miseries? The predominant theme of the thinking of the following period was the struggle for immortality. This provided a battle ground on which one could prepare for future triumphs with easy victories. Before one could conquer the belligerent power of the earthly death, the airy forms of "re-death" could be easily conquered, and the man could acquire through such victories "immortality", "the loftiest of this whole world". Of course, immortality the man hoped for did not mean prolonging the life on earth for ever, but getting ultimately the eternal bliss. This was in the mind of the believers as the most worthy of all desires. The man desired a long life in this world till he attained old age. Immortality was for the otherworld. Now it is some ritualistic action that should help one to get it—say, a magic surrounding the mortal components of a being with the immortal ones, and thus making them immortal—; now it is some knowledge from the field of science around the sacrifice. Indeed the priests even go to the extent of proposing a doctrine like the one that a king "lives his full life, remains free from re-death, when a knowing Brāhmaṇa is the custodian of his kingdom and is his house-priest". The man can even save his departed fathers from re-death with the help of a correct rite and a knowledge of the ritual. The shallowness of all these thoughts is revealed in frivolity and gratuitousness of the promise of deliverance from re-death made here and there, without any trace of a serious motivation for that achievement.

It can be easily understood that the idea of living in the world of heaven or gods is predominant when it concerns the essence and substance of an existence free from death. As for the rest, the expressions vary, depending each time upon the fortuitousness of the context. In a passage, the redeemed one is described as looking down from heights on the movement of days and nights "like the one standing on a cart and looking from above at its moving wheels". Another time it is said that while his eye goes to the sun, other limbs to the moon, the regions of the sky, the wind, he himself "becomes one among the divinities he chooses and finds peace... Whatever oblation he makes, it becomes his Self in that world. Thus when a knower departs from this world, his oblation being behind him, calls out to him: "Come? Here I am, your Self."

19

INTRODUCTION

In spite of all the expanses of future with which one liked to play there, the inner constraints of these thoughts coming out of the priests' brains are clearly exposed. The world is an enlarged sacrificial place; the deceased rules in the otherworld, having become a piece of sacrifice through a bizarre wonder. All this, like the whole sacrificial science of the Brāhmaṇas, is without solemnity; it is dry and cold. Yet great developments to evolve were taking shape in it. There are passages—they may belong to the later Brāhmaṇa-period—which speak the language of the coming period without leaving the ground of that science. Let us consider a few of such expressions.

"It is said there: Who is the better one, he who sacrifices to his own Self (ātman), or he who sacrifices to the gods? Let him say, 'the one who sacrifices to one's Self'." Offering brought to the gods is like a tribute made to a king. But the offering brought to one's Self "discards all the evil from his mortal body like the serpent shedding its skin. His essence consists of holy hymns, mantras, songs, oblations. Thus he proceeds to the heavenly world."

After the "Brahman-sacrifice", i.e. the Veda-recitations to be taken up daily, is described—Brahman is to be understood here in its old meaning as a power inherent in the Veda texts—the one who brings this sacrifice with a correct understanding is given a promise: "He will indeed be released from re-death; his Self will be united with the soul of the Brahman".

"Let him know this: All the worlds have I placed within my own Self (ātman) and mine own Self have I placed within all worlds. All gods...all Vedas...all breath-powers have I placed within my own Self. And mine own worlds, imperishable, indeed, are the gods, imperishable the Vedas, imperishable the breath-powers, imperishable the All. And whosoever thus knows this, passes from imperishable unto the imperishable, conquers re-death, and attains the full measure of life."

Let us conclude with one of the mantras in verse interspersed at times with the prose of the Brāhmaṇa-texts.

"Only through knowledge may one climb desireless heights, Where sacrificial reward climbs not and austerity without knowledge."

Here the knowledge carries away victory from work in the rivalry between the two as the donors of the otherworldly goods, where it concerns the highest good. This can be easily understood. We shall see again how within the sacrificial theology a knowledge of a general type began to develop that had nothing to do directly with concrete ritualistic works. But the author liked to talk about the loftiest things in such a freer context, and that is why knowledge might appear as an incomprehensible, subtle, and therefore, a mightier magic compared to the palpable realities of the sacrificial work. Which other power should reach higher than knowledge in the opinion of these schools where everything was aimed at achievement and possession of knowledge?

It was taught in the great period of Brahmanic speculation, in the Upaniṣads, that the knower without desires, the one who has grasped in his Self

20

the Supreme Universal Self, the Brahman, is delivered from the misery of transmigration of souls. The thoughts discussed here prepared a ground for that. The antithesis between renewed death and immortality is revealed with growing decisiveness despite all sorts of confusion. The old antithesis between the living and the dead becomes weakened, as one begins to think of the return of the dead to life on earth. Now the question was rather, whether one is delivered from re-death or not. Immortality, deliverance, begins to be the goal of all goals. Particularly, the passages quoted just above express—talking of immortality and the path to it—the great maxims of the Upaniṣads: Knowledge and desirelessness, Ātman (Self) and Brahman. The ideas of the sacrificial science pass on smoothly and unnoticeably into those of the Upaniṣads. How many thoughts contain unfathomed depths by a fast fading word at first slipping over them. It was not given to the teachers of the Brāhmaṇa-period to delve in these depths. It was reserved for the earnestness and genial vision alone. The Upaniṣads are their monuments.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

INTRODUCTION

21

14. A memorial verse in a later Vedic ritual text shows how this triad was understood as permanent and what systematic importance was given to it: “What refers to the deities, to the Self and to the sacrifice: this triad is called knowledge in the mantras and the Brāhmaṇas. (Śāṅkhāyana Grhyasūtra I, 2, 5).

15. The knower of the three Vedas : Ṛg-, Yajur- and Sāmaveda.

16. See below reference 20 on this.

17. It is, as already remarked, not possible that this idea of “Re-death” traces back to the Ṛgvedic period or even further back. One speaks of the heavenly worlds in an invocation to Soma (Ṛg. IX, 113), and verse after verse, the prayer “Make me immortal there” repeated. This might mean that a new death also threatens in those worlds. In fact, the text resembles many of the later texts speaking in this sense of attaining immortality in the heavenly world. But I would not like to speak here with the confidence of Boyer (in his excellent essay “Sur l’origine de la doctrine du Saṃsāra”, Journal asiatique 1901, II, 466); I think, the wording does not allow also a clear interpretation. Besides, this hymn comes from the much later portions of the Ṛgveda. This might suggest that the belief mentioned in it could also have been characteristic for older times when there was practically no mention of death and the otherworld.

18. The first birth is natural. The second is an acquisition of the capacity to sacrifice.

19. We can further think of a definitive destruction in the re-death. It is possible that this opinion one often comes across elsewhere was also there in the welter of so many opinions. I think, it is scarcely likely. If the first death allowed an existence liable to a re-death to continue, why then the re-death so clearly characterised by its name as an identical repetition of the first should have other consequences? And there is explicitly talk about repeated re-deaths. When “fathers” are called “mortal”, it need not, of course, mean a dying that destroys existence.

20. It is quite possible that also this idea of the return, is in fact, much older than it appears from the wording of the text. It comes—according to Oltramare (Hist. des idées théos. I, 97)—from an old popular belief. Sources like the Ṛgveda, as already mentioned, do not permit the Argumentum ex silentio with reference to such questions.—In the text quoted above, the incongruity can be easily understood that there is a talk about the return as something welcome, whereas re-death is generally feared.

21. Yet I would rather think that the passage in question (Śatapatha Br. XII, 9, 3, 11-12) is to be interpreted differently. The parallelism between animals and fathers suggests that the concept of release from re-death has simply been shifted from the former to the latter. For the inhabitants of the otherworld living eternally a possession of animals not threatened by re-death appeared to be equally eternally welcome.

22. Taitt. Brāhmaṇa III, 10, 11, 3. Also the commentary interprets the passage as the treasure of good works.

23. Śatapatha Br. X, 1, 3, 7.

24. The knower of a certain doctrine stated in the relevant passage of a text.

25. Śat. Br. XI, 2, 2, 5f.

26. In the following: Śat. Br. XI, 2, 6, 13f.; 5, 6, 9 (in the footnote there: Kauṣitaki Br. XXI, 1); XII, 3, 4, 11; X, 5, 4, 16.

27. More details in Chapter I.

28. Literally: he attains “equal self-hood” (sātmatā, derived from ātman) with Brahman. Similarly “participation in the world of Brahman and communion with it” is promised in Kauṣitaki Brāhmaṇa—here without any clue for the conception of the Brahman.

References

1. Comp. the chapter on Buddhism for details.

2. For example, where a doctrine is established on the movement of the sun: “In fact, he (the sun) never sets”. The text then continues: “Nor does he set for him who has such a knowledge. Such a person becomes united with the sun, assumes his form and enters his place.” Aitareya Brāhmaṇa III, 44.

3. The log of wood he lays daily on the fire of his teacher gives him sacred heat.

4. The north-east brings luck, because it combines in itself the powers of the east, i.e. of the sun-rise, and those of the north, towards which the sun moves in the period when the days become longer.

5. I refer particularly to the brilliant work of L. Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, Paris 1910.

6. Is it based only upon the sophistry post hoc, ergo propter hoc that this influence is ascribed to the image? Lévy-Bruhl ibid., 74 has reasons to contradict it.

7. It cannot be questioned that there the old rites are not simply repeated as a traditional possession but also the motives for the mental attitude of the persons involved in it are still quite alive.

8. It cannot be concealed that the border-line—also the chronological separation—between the texts of that science and the speculative Upaniṣads is not fully fixed. Thus it is uncertain with reference to many statements whether it belongs to the pre-history of the pantheistic speculation or to this itself. On the whole, both the periods are sufficiently separated from one another. That they often intermingle with one another is just one of the characteristics of this process of development.

9. It appears to mean: one who knows his human body knows the law of rain brought by the year, because the perspiration-pouring body is like the rain-pouring power of the nature.

10. Yet, one progresses in fact also to the abstract idea of “Kālá”: the word means at first, it appears, the right point of time proper for a particular purpose, then generally the time. Comp. also reference 5 Chap. I.

11. Compare the detailed discussion in my Religion des Veda, 479f. (The Religion of the Veda, Delhi, 1988, p. 253f.)

12. While reciting the mantras etc.

13. Durkheim et Mauss, De quelques formes primitives de classification (Année socio-logique 1901-02); Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures 31. 198. 428.

CHAPTER I

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

It is not our intention to preface this endeavour of describing the trends and movements of thoughts of the Upaniṣads—at first of the older Upaniṣads1—by speaking on the aspects of these texts themselves or on the question how far their contents have formed a system. The form of presentation those ancients applied, the existence or absence of coherent order in their ideas, will be described later with greater vividness and precision. But there should be a talk here, above all, about the ideas themselves.

The description of the sacrificial science has shown at several places, how there were factors in it which drifted beyond it and prepared a ground for the formulation of these ideas.

But there was no occasion so far to think of a characteristic sphere of the cult—one can say that it is at the periphery of its realm—which had been particularly important for the developments occupying our mind. Besides the tangible sacrificial rites and liturgic procedures, there were, even early, certain methods of immaterial character revealing an excellent capacity for inner absorption. As it was their nature, they put themselves easily at the service of idealistic powers newly appearing on the horizon, and therefore, not easily accessible to the sacrifice or the usual forms of magic. Magic effect was attributed to a mere thought from the ancient times; thus at certain places of sacred actions, specific thoughts were prescribed, whose force was supposed to lend to the rite a direction to aim at some desires or needs expressed in those thoughts.

Cultic Influence of Thought, of “Worship”

We must mention further an activity which can be named “worship”. One stepped (upa sthā) solemnly in front of a deity to be worshipped with or without mantras; one also seated oneself in front of this deity with a respectful meditation (upa-ās, upa-ni-ṣad: it can be clearly seen that we approach here the sphere of “Upaniṣad”).2 “When he brings the morning and evening offering to the sacrificial fire or sits down for that purpose: then this is his worship”. A particularly common form of “worship” is that one remembers respectfully an entity to be worshipped under a certain name, as if it is embodied in the entity named thus: one worships the mystic fire-altar as speech; one worships the sacrificial song as the syllable Om. Prescript regulating this was followed by explanations elaborating or illustrating further the relevant identification. Here, as one can see, the practices of a spiritualized cult are easily developed

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which comprised in themselves one’s turning to the most exalted, transcendental objects of worship and creating a definite form for that.

Henotheism of Impersonal World-powers

Such a mighty tendency in the whole cult life of more and more resonant glorification of powers from which one expected fulfilment of one’s desires directed the thought to such lofty objects with a special force. As it is well-known, it is quite clearly seen in the Ṛgveda with respect to gods. The poets there liked to flatter them by telling them that they are not only themselves, but are also other gods. They sustained in them their whole might and splendour. “O Agni, you are Varuṇa, when you are born. You become Mitra when you are kindled. All gods are in you, you son of Strength. You are Indra for the mortal who serves you.” And something like the “henotheism” we have discussed here, the worship of gods who appeared alternatively as the highest or as the only ones, could be more easily developed in the region of those substances flowing through the world. The sacrificial science was, above all, concerned with these substances. For, the contours of the divine personalities were not sufficiently sharp and definite. They, therefore, surpassed their own limits and drifted into one another in a confused manner. If this was the case with the divine personalities, then it can be easily understood that the same thing also held good for the more indistinct, more flexible potentialities of the sacrificial theology. In addition, many positive, if incomplete, observations favour a penchant for placing, more or less decisively, a single natural or mental power in the centre of all. The fire blown by wind and the water dried by it appeared to have gone into the wind. When speech becomes silent in a sleeping person, the eye does not see, the ear does not hear, but the breath continues, then the breath appears to have assumed this everything else in itself, the speaking, seeing and hearing faculties. It was the style of the Indian fantasy to go quickly to the extremes. But how could the man

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

25

plurality of the phenomena. We see in fact this basic motif working wherever only the philosophical thought is active. Now it awakens dream forms of poetry and ecstasy, now it makes efforts to prove with the help of compelling force of inference what was rooted for long in man’s inner vision, but what was not proven. It is true that one way of thinking is possible—and its features have not been altogether alien to the polymorphic Indian philosophy. This way of thinking persists quite within the limits of an individual by going deep in the intrinsic bottom of the phenomena in search of, what they often call it in India, essence and the essence of the essence. This is done so that the phenomenal will be understood as a phenomenon of the mind, belonging to it alone; it is only mind imbibing its power from within. But the philosophy of life tending to be at home, where the man sought to influence the course of things by magic and arts related to it, has rather turned from the beginning, as was already mentioned (p. 8), to a different approach to things. Here predominates a beholding for which “one works and lives in the other” and thus “everything moves towards the whole”; here the “ἐν ϒσe ἀò πᾶν of alchemy counts. And the tendency shown by the belief is particularly followed by the Indian mind with a special force. This happens so that the trends characteristic for that stage of mental development observed everywhere and the influences arising from this particular soul of the people strengthen one another mutually. In India, the feeling of personality lacked full energy; and thus no definite, strong existence was bestowed upon the objects in their limitation. No exercise of action was practised here which strikes at the firm and brittle nature of things bumping heavily into space; an action which must fathom and respect their peculiarities in order to reach its goal. Here was revealed rather an impatience of thinking which cannot very easily recognise the One “through whose knowledge the whole world can be perceived”. Thus the Indian soul became seldom aware of beauty present in the appearance of an individual and the force reposing in it and definition of its forms: the formative arts of India will testify to this. The eye was closed to the phenomena and their colourful peculiarities; one was lost in listening to how the stream of life flows in their dark depths, the one in all.

An aversion to acknowledge definitively the varied plurality is pronounced in many verses of the Ṛgvedic hymns (comp. above p. 8), and not altogether seldom in the Brāhmaṇas, although with monotony and clumsiness so peculiar to these texts. One strives to reduce step by step a bigger number which some entity possessed at the beginning to a smaller number, till one reached a unit. Śākalya asks, “How many gods are there, Yājñavalkya?—Three hundred and three; three thousand and three. Amen! answered the other. How many gods are there really, Yājñavalkya?—Three and thirty.” Thus the number is reduced further and further. There are three, two, one and half. There is only one. The one is the breath : what it must have meant is that it is the One All-animating upon whom reposes the existence of all gods. Similarly, a question is asked in another passage: how many days does a year have, and answer after answer, the number is reduced till it is finally said: “One day”—for, day

Focusing the Thinking on Unity

The desire so deeply inherent in the philosophising mind forced its way further particularly towards this idea of conceiving the unity of being in all

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after day, the day repeats itself throughout the year. "That is the worship dedicated to the year (upanisad). Thus he who knows this worship dedicated to the year becomes more and more privileged during the course of the year. Selfhood is bestowed upon him. He becomes the year. He goes to gods having become year." One should not allow oneself to be hampered by the fantastic tone of these mental games in perceiving the characteristic feature upon which everything depends. The first impression which things awaken in one's mind is that of mighty plurality: reduced before the eyes of the observer, it simplifies itself. One asks further and further: one arrives at the unity. Thus one is at one's goal. That beckon rewards assured to the knower by magic power of knowledge. An easily conquered triumph. One has looked beyond, all too quickly and casually, the whole wealth of what a plurality makes a plurality. Thus it is not difficult to discover the unity.

Focusing the Desires on Unity

Now the theoretical interest in this unity allied itself to the desires and needs for the highest well-being of one's existence and to the impulses of dreamlike yearning and imperious desire. Only this merging gave to that interest its whole effective strength. One has only slowly and gradually progressed in search of knowledge, and for the sake of knowledge alone.

One text describes quite vividly the character of desire filling the souls here: "A man aspires for something beyond what he achieves. If he reaches the air-region, he aspires beyond that. If he reaches the otherworld, he would aspire beyond that." One wanted to get deliverance very fast, a deliverance devoid of all dangers, all impediments. For that, one had to get a footing in an all-encompassing, all penetrating entity. A power of All, of all powers, the profoundest, the hiddenmost, had to be there so that the man could partake of its exuberant wealth. This release from re-death, the immortality for which so many thoughts and desires aspired, had to be attained: better on the paths of those swaying mental games which promised in generous mood a reward of immortality to the performer of different rites, the knower of various rituals. Up to the super-exalted heights of the One who is above death! Down in one's own essence, where one finds hidden that thing "which does not age with man's ageing, does not die with his death!" The desires aspiring for all-pervading heights for the exaltation of the ego do not look only to the regions beyond death. One Upaniṣad once says quite openly and characteristically: "A Plenum is the same as pleasure. There is no pleasure in the small... Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else: that is a Plenum. But where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else: that is the small. Verily, the Plenum is the same as the immortal, but the small is the same as the mortal.— O Sublime One, on what is the Plenum established?—On its own greatness, or also not on its greatness. In this world cows and horses are called greatness, elephants and gold, slaves and wives, fields and abodes. It does not

27

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

mean this, it does not—he said—for one thing is established upon the other. But it (Plenum) is below, above, to the west, to the east, to the south and to the north. It is this whole world. "He who understands thus this Self as All", the text continues, "rejoicing in the Self, playing with the Self, copulating with the Self and enjoying the Self, such a one becomes autonomous; he traverses all the worlds freely. But those who know otherwise than this are subject to heteronomous rules; they have perishable worlds; they move fettered through all worlds."3

Mysticism

In expressions like this, one finds oneself in the proximity of the sphere, or rather one has already entered the sphere, in which delight in such wealth and merging with the universal being are desired and enjoyed most profoundly: in the sphere of mysticism.

The mysticism in India aspired also from the ancient times to absorb in itself a higher existence and to merge with a higher existence. At first, of course, in crude and grotesque forms. The Soma-intoxication exalted the pious carouser to heights where he towered over heaven and earth. A hymn of the Ṛgveda describes the wild activity of the ascetics "dressed in dirt", "whom the gods have entered". Later Vedic texts describe the "blue-black darkness" and "gripping power" of various shamanic austerities.4 On the whole, all that did not find a favourable ground where the worship of personal Vedic gods tuned to another key was in full force; the ritualistic element was much ahead of the mystical in the Soma-poetry of the Ṛgveda. But then the Brāhmaṇa-speculation had carried its trend of the impersonal into its ritualistic procedure. The old sacrifice had not remained any more a sober occasion of giving and taking between persons. The fantasy playing with it had converted it into a mysterious influence of impersonal potentialities. Thus new ways were paved so that the mysticism in new forms which can more easily prosper in the sphere of the impersonal could be heralded. Now onwards it stood, of course, on another niveau than the one of those Ṛgvedic Fakirs. It went through similar purifications as they had gone through in Greece from the tantrums of bacchanalism to Plotinus' ecstasy. The mystic of the Upaniṣads was no longer concerned with the noise of the wild, unruly spirits. He was not over-whelmingly obsessed by the magic arts of a thaumaturgist. Nor did he aspire for it—or only as a subordinate thing, bringing tribute to the ideas of the age—. But he sought immortality, eternity and blissful substantial merging with the otherworldly, with the Supreme Being.

Thus movements were inspired by congregation of various motives among potentialities. The sacrificial science had bestowed on them power over things. From amongst them, a predominant supreme power rose above the confusion. A well-defined work of thought had not yet played its role in it. It is, as if the ideas had transformed themselves into a new figure on account of their own importance.

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

The Brahman

Different Names of the Supreme Being

What should be the name given to the Supreme Being attaining absolute power?

One could expect a common expression like "being", "that which is" of the Eleatics. A Ṛgvedic hymn had indeed uttered the word on the beginnings of things in a wonderful early maturity of abstraction:

"Then was not non-existence nor existence."

In fact, "that which is" (sat) is named a primordial being at places in the Upaniṣads and related texts. Or to find something more original, from which (asat). It was even taught boldly that this asat was at the beginnings of things; and that this was "that which is" (sat). Or the primordial beings were occasionally given names in one's grouping to take a hold here, or a hold there, like Kālá "time",5 or with a personal term, Prajāpati, the common name for the world-creator in the Brāhmaṇa-texts.

But two other terms emerged quite ahead of these rival designations and conceptions for the Highest Being.

It was called Brahman, something like "the sacred power". And it was called Ātman, "the Self".

It is characteristic and quite in accordance with the description of the course of events sketched above that it was just not "that which is", but more concrete potentialities present in the midst of the colossal confusion of sacrificial symbolism which advanced to take the final possession of the highest position. And apparently, both these terms moved up somewhat at the same time: a second, not less characteristic feature. The same tendency of advancing worked also in different regions of the masses of concepts. Thus there emerged two similar attempts to solve the same problem. It is possible, but hardly certain that this is so because we have before us the work of many. The disorderly fluctuation of these ideas lets it also appear to be quite conceivable that this or that entity is presented as the Supreme Being to the same minds, alternatively, if not at the same time. Otherwise, two systems opposed to each other would have emerged: the doctrine of Brahman and the doctrine of Ātman. But here the bearers of the highest dignity have soon identified themselves with each other; One and All could be there only in one example. The third very characteristic feature of this movement of thought ultimately is that none of the powers rising to the position of the Supreme Being belongs to the realm of physical nature.6 Other mysteries than those of the nature appear to be more profound, more vital: here the central potentiality of the Veda, of the Brahman: there the central potentiality of the personality, of the Ātman. May I say that the egocentric character of these concepts becomes quite evident here? The power ruling over all existence was found by the Brahmanic thinker in what he felt was the mysterious, fearful, magic power

29

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

working through his mind, or in a universal Self resembling his own Self. Nay, it was his own Self.

The Brahman, its Ancient Concept

The word and the concept of Brahman can be traced back to the most ancient Indian texts. There is no doubt that this word is really much older.7

In order to understand its meaning, the European must think that he has grown on the soil of that philosophy of life with which the descriptions so far were concerned: the All is permeated by forces having their seat sometimes here or sometimes there, living or embodied in this or that man, animal, thing, number and word. Now they hover around freely, carried over or made to fly by touch, openly or secretly, by their own force or obeying a magic to exert influences in accordance with the fantastic orders of their nature.

Long before the speculation gave that name to the absolute Being, Brahman was in this sense simultaneously a Vedic word and—what coincides with it for the old style of conception—a holy, uncanny substance and power inherent in the Vedic word in contrast to a profane word. Also inherent in the knower and possessor of this word, the Brahmaṇa, in contrast to a profane man. One should not understand the expression "holy" used here—there is hardly any need to be reminded of that—in a sense of the highest and purest ethical sublimity, as it is normally current in Europe. Ethical elements—particularly elements of Christian ethics—must be kept at a distance. What does not belong to normal existence and what is incomparably superior to it is "holy" here. It is something ruling in its own style. Something whose excessive might mocks at every opponent. It punishes severely the prying contact by daily hustle and bustle and the violation of taboo.

Thus the sacredness of Brahman appeared first in the Vedic word that was infused with mystic power. A Brāhmaṇa-text speaks of a "seven-syllabled Brahman" upon which the sun is founded: one syllable is ṛc (the holy hymn); yajus and sāman (sacrificial mantra and sacrificial song) constitute two syllables each; finally the two syllables are all the brahman which is still there besides those. We may think of the magic formulas and hymns of the Atharvaveda and other things resembling them; we may also remember that the priest who talked about the secret meaning of the sacrifice was called "spokesman of Brahman". Brahman was thus as much the "threefold knowledge" of the Veda classified according to hymns, sacrificial mantras and sacrificial songs. "Speech is indeed Brahman. Truth of this speech is Brahman". One must, to appreciate this expression, think of the role of the ancient concept ascribed to the word and to its mystic nature and secret power. Irresistably, unmistakably, in heaven and on earth rules the Brahman, the magic mantra or the magic prayer the well-informed priest wielded. He harnesses, as a Ṛgvedic hymn describes, a long-maned steed for the god through the power of Brahman, for the journey to the Soma-feast. Priest Viśvāmitra's Brahman protected the people of Bharat. Evil spirits and

30

earthly foes are killed with the help of Brahman. The one who wants to acquire the power and knowledge of the Brahman inherent in the Veda and gather it in oneself, the one whom "the teacher introduces to Brahman" and the one who "bears in himself the radiant Brahman, wherein all gods are interwoven", must practise the duties of "Brahmacarya" (comp. p. 5 above). The precept of chastity applying to the pupil has the meaning that nothing that is infused with the precious substance of Brahman should escape from his body. It is, therefore, no wonder that this strong concentration of the magic power is not carried over from the pupillage into the everyday life. A bath concludes the schooling. It was already mentioned (p. 5) that its original stipulation was to wash away that thing which might bring danger from what is sacred into the changed situation of life not equipped for a direct contact with it.

Brahman and Ksatra

Thus there was, besides the sacred word, a second embodiment of Brahman: a sacred man who as Brahmacārin (one who observes Brahma-carya) and then generally as a Brahmanā had the name from just that entity clinging to him. Brahman present in a Brahmanā had its counterpart in the potentiality inherent in the worldly nobility, the second caste, the Ksatra.8 Brahman and Ksatra are "two powers" which control human society. A chariot drawn by horses, armour, bow and arrow were named as the weapons of Ksatra; weapons of Brahman are the sacrificial implements. The alliance of that material and this spiritual power appeared also to the Indian statesmen necessary. One prayed:

"Where the powers of Brahman and Ksatra go together in harmony: May I see the sacred world where Agni sojourns with gods."

One did not fail to emphasise here—perhaps all the more earnestly since the reality hardly corresponded always to this ideal—that the predominance goes in that alliance to the Brahman by right. "That kingdom prospers where the Ksatra is subject to the will of the Brahman; it is rich in heroes; a hero is born there alone." But if the Ksatra ventures to offend the Brahman, then its earthly power breaks miserably to pieces before that magic power, before the superiority of the invisible over the visible, of the subtile, profound over the superficial:

"Armed with sharp shooting arrows are the Brahmanas. Shots of their bow are certain of goal. They pursue the enemy smattering him with wrath And ardour of penance from afar."

Related Concepts Outside India

From all this, it is seen how Brahman was active in the sphere of the

31

ancient belief in magic at this stage of development. Tapas (literally "heat", comp. p. 4 above) often mentioned along was closely connected with it the Indian stock of this belief. Tapas is the magic atmosphere of the power of penance—that power as once was acquired by the world-creator Prajāpati: light emerged from the pores of his body, stars, after thousand years of ardent penance. If we look beyond India, we encounter the Mana of Melanesians the power "which influences everything that goes beyond the human power, all that lies outside the courses of events in nature. It is present in the atmosphere of life, clings to persons and things and is revealed in success which can be attributed only to its influences... Magicians, physicians, weather-forecasters, prophets, diviners, dream artists: they all work in the same fashion everywhere in the islands with the help of 'his power' (Codrington). Similarly Orenda of Hurons, and there is a large series of potentialities among other peoples and races to which ethnology has been giving at present a thorough attention.9 Of course, it should not be overlooked that they are different from the Brahman. Brahman, as we understand its nature, is not a common world-influencing supernatural power—name and concept of such power appears to me to be missing in the Veda. It is just a particular, sacred and magically strong word of the Veda. A mysterious substance is inherent in it and those who possess it. Social developments have shaped this special potentiality to give it a peculiar importance, and then it is elevated only secondarily, as we shall see later, to its universal significance. But all the same, the resemblance of Brahman to Mana, Orenda and the like is vast enough to contribute to the feature of the historical niveau clearly indicated at the Veda alone. The concept of Brahman in its high antiquity belongs at first to this niveau. The connecting lines branching out from there to a later phase, to the Brahman as the highest idea of the pantheistic speculation, do not obviously run through the wide distances in time. Thus it is from the very outset probable that the traces in which the proximity of the ancient ideas is clearly revealed will be hardly missing in the appearance of that idea when the movement will have reached its goal.

Elevation of Brahman to the Highest Esteem

The movement we are about to discuss now is reflected in many fully resonant expressions of the texts bestowing upon the Brahman the most sublime dignity reaching the highest zenith. It would be an idle attempt to arrange the individual ideas emerging there in accordance with the degree of their reaching the last climax. Even if it were to be reached, it would still be uncertain how far the chronological order of the individual could be fixed. It must be borne in mind for the understanding of the whole process, how basically different from the Christian conception of the world is this conception in which the idea of the Brahman is elevated to its domineering height, an image in whose elements, as we saw, the sacrificial hymns, sacrificial mantras and sacrificial songs are as prominent as, nay, more prominent than,

32

heaven, earth and all sorts of magical powers, where happenings and movements of life in the world correspond to the figures of sacrificial process and of liturgies and are guided by the magical power inherent in the word of the Veda. All this is observed with the eyes of the man who feels that this power is inherent in him from his birth. He knows that “Kṣatra is formed from the Brahman: but the Brahman is Brahman through his own Self.” A Brah-mana spends his days in accumulating the Brahman in himself more and more strongly, protecting it cautiously and activating it skilfully.

Now10 “the Brahman, the threefold knowledge” is the first creation which the world-creator Prajāpati has released from himself taking pains and in fervent austerity, and it has become the foundation of this universe. Now that creation merges with the creator, and it is taught, “Prajāpati is verily Brah-man, for Prajāpati is of Brahman-nature.” “The Brahman is the most ancient (highest), for there is nothing more ancient (higher) than this. The one who knows this will verily become the most ancient and the most glorious of all beings.” “The Brahman is the highest among gods… Heaven and earth are pillared apart by Brahman. “All beings are in threefold knowledge.”

“Wide region of the east belongs to the Ṛc11”—

a song begins thus. It dedicates the four directions of the sky to the Vedas and lets the castes be born from them.

“The ancients proclaimed this world to the ancients.”

The same song says that the sunrise, midday and the sunset are controlled by the Ṛgveda, the Yajurveda and the Sāmaveda:

“The Sun goes his way full of the three Vedas.”

and further:

“All forms have sprung from the Ṛc,

Every movement for every from the Yajus;

All fires bear Sāman’s appearance:

This whole universe is created from the Brahman.”

It is clearly seen that it is basically the same old Brahman revealed in the Vedas which is elevated here to an all-creative power. Its relation to the universe is like the relation of its branches and manifestations, the three Vedas, to the individual types of existence or phases of life within the universe.12

And finally, it was not a surprising step forward in the hazy uncertainty of all these thoughts when the being created by the universe became itself the Supreme Being. When this step was taken, the link between the word Brah-man and its old, restricted meaning became inevitably loose. Instead, the Brahman happened to merge together with the other idea possessing also the power of being elevated to an all-dominating recognition, the Ātman.

33

THE ĀTMAN

Ātman and Breath

There can be hardly any doubt that the basic meaning of Ātman is “breath”; the Indian word goes etymologically with the German word Atem. Ancient Vedic verses link Ātman to Vāta, i.e. wind or Wind-god. The wind is the Ātman of Varuṇa. It is the Ātman of gods. If a man dies, it is said, “his eye goes to the sun, his Ātman to the wind”. It is evident how the Ātman is assigned a role to be a wind-like breath belonging to and inherent in an individual being. Since breath appears to be the bearer of life, and as such, the existence of a person is based on it, the original meaning of Ātman becomes less important than this more distinguished, more profound meaning. Thus Ātman is different from Prāṇa. This word tends to name the breath in the sense of a body function, or also in the plural, a majority of such functions, “the breath-powers”.13 Ātman is more important, more central than Prāṇa or Prāṇas. It is the “unnamed Prāṇa”: but what has no name is considered as more profound and more wonderful than what has a name. “The Ātman lives here in the centre, and the Prāṇas around him.” “Ten are the Prāṇas in man. The Ātman is the eleventh. Prāṇas are founded on him.” That Ātman also lives within the heart—in accordance with the age-old concept of metempsychosis—as a small man (puruṣa) having the size of a thumb, or of a rice-corn or a barley-corn does not contradict the concept of Ātman as breath. It is the ruler of individual organs and takes their help in achieving its goal. This conception may certainly be attributed to the period in which the Upaniṣadic speculation was conceived. It is explicitly expressed, as far as I can see, only in one Upaniṣad: a seer, a listener, a speaker is indeed the Ātman; eye, ear and voice are merely the tools. If there is a talk about one’s own person, in contrast to children and cattle one possesses, then the word for that is Ātman. Ātman as an expression for the Self is a reflexive pronoun. It is said, “he redeems the Ātman” for “he redeems himself”.

A term is coined to play altogether a leading role in these developments of thoughts. Here a figure was found as one wished to imagine it: this is something unique living in the depth of the plurality, but the plurality is founded on it and ruled by it. This unique is ego characterising a point where the last, highest interests are questioned. But as we have already mentioned (p. 16), strongest threads run from the realm of the ego to the universe in the thoughts of this period, as if from the sphere of the word of the Veda. But how should the boundaries between the two be fixed for the imagination which was so fervently excited? The universe flows into the ego. The ego takes it in, imagin-ing and perceiving it. The configuration of the world of ego reflects the configuration of the great world outside. As the breath dwells in the body, it is nothing but the “breath” (prāṇa) which thunders and rains in nature and flashes like a lightning:

34

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

"When the breath inundates the wide earth with the downpour of rain,

Then the whole animal world is happy: now

abundance is bestowed upon us!

Grass and herbs drenched in rain speak all together:

You are the one who bestowed life upon us!

You granted us sweet fragrance!"

Ātman the Self

Obviously the concept of the universal Self corresponding to the human

Ātman and resembling it in essence becomes forcefully inevitable, when now

similarly the human or the animal eye corresponds to the sun, as seen above

with the "breath" (prāṇa). It is more so, when the eye goes to the sun in death

to be merged with him completely and also when the other limbs have corres-

pondence and goal in the creatures of macrocosm. This great Self had to be

the foundation upon which the individual Self reposes, the goal to which its

movement is directed. Here was the desire to know one's own ego, anchored

in the Highest Being, assured of its fulfilment.

A hymnic poet—at that time only in a fleeting play of thoughts—had

anticipated long ago the concept of a universal Ātman. This was in the ancient

period of the ṁRgveda when he wrote, "the sun, the Ātman of movement and

rest." Now the emphasis on a single material entity like the sun could no

more be the last word. A formula emerged letting the right correspondences

of the type described earlier, like sun—eye, world regions—ear, etc., end

obviously in the final link forming the zenith of the whole series: "The Ātman

rests in my Ātman"—the universal in the personal: a connection perhaps

more close, more evident than all those preceding ones, for here two different

words like sun and eye were no more juxtaposed with one another, but the

same word Ātman inspired on either side an idea of complete identity.

The Universal Ātman

A certain difference between the movement in which Brahman and Ātman

have been elevated to this zenith does not appear to be mistaken. Besides the

most extreme enhancement of the concept of Brahman, there are in the texts,

as we saw, lesser such augmentations. But the Ātman, on the other hand,

jumps abruptly from its individual to a general recognition. The indefinite

substance of Brahman was more easily capable of progressing less far and

deep or also further. The Ātman, on the other hand, the Self which had to be

a Self of some creature needed for itself a certain definiteness in this bond

with a certain substratum. It united in itself the forces of this substratum. We

might also think of a universal Self besides the Self of the beings given in

experience or say, identical with that. But a driving force could not be found

to make an intermediate station. One does not know where, on the way from

35

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

the one to the other, to imagine a Self that could have been more the one and

not the other.

BRAHMAN AND ĀTMAN MADE IDENTICAL

Thus everything was ready so that the great event could take place: the

merging of the two entities already merged in the Self of the Brahmana filled

with Brahman, now that both had been elevated to a universal power: here

of the old magical power of the sacred word and the sacred caste, and there of

the idea of ego, of Self. Now the barriers collapsed. The thinkers continued

with the other when they had begun to speak of the Supreme Being with the

one name. When they wanted to describe Ātman, they said it was Brahman.

If one asked for the Brahman, they explained it as Ātman. This last trend of

thought was perhaps more predominant than the others, for the idea of the

Brahman was more obscure, and that of the Ātman more clear for one's

understanding. Given the admissible differentiation in the fluctuation of

contours prevalent everywhere, it can perhaps be said that Brahman, corres-

ponding to its earlier nature, brought with itself a tendency of immensity to

the form of the Supreme Being reconstructing itself from Brahman and Self,

i.e., in a certain sense, over Brahman and Self. And the Self brought with itself

more a tendency of profundity. That has an objectivity; this has a subjectivity.

There a power reigning over the things intensively, magically, more magically

than royally. Here, the one dwelling in the innermost of existence, just this

nucleus of the entity which is innermost. A hint of earthly smell of the ground

in which the concept of magic and magic power had grown came from the

Brahman to the Supreme Being like a waft of pre-historic times: no small

facility of entry into the realm of thought for a Brahmana at home on that

ground. Light and knowledge, kinship, nay merging with the Ātman of the

man seeking and thinking this eternal, came from the Ātman to the Supreme

Being. I think, the reader of the Upaniṣads will feel that Ātman, compared

with Brahman, appears on the whole to be an adequate expression, may be

adequate perhaps only by a nuance, to the composers of the Upaniṣads whom

this double nature offered many facilities for their movement of thought.

More urgent than the Self, it was necessary for Brahman to cast off restric-

tions of outdated forms of thinking which had given the Supreme Being its

name and which lingered in one's memory becoming fainter and fainter.

Finally, in juxtaposition of both the names, something of the emancipation

of the highest idea is expressed, to some extent, with respect to the pre-

history from which it had grown. Howsoever resolutely it was felt that each

of these names was a valid name of the idea, none of them was the only name,

and the Highest remained finally independent of the one as well as the other

name. But it did not indeed act also any more, so or at least, it did not act

often so—, that one talked about Brahman or Self in the nearest sense of these

words to proclaim it further as the Supreme Being. But the man spoke of the

36

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Supreme Being, and while the need of the man sought name for the one that

could not be named, he named it Brahman, he named it Ātman.

The Prose-Hymn of the Śāṇḍilya

One of the most ancient, or rather the most ancient evidence for the

merging of Brahman and Ātman is present in an effusion of philosophical

eloquence. This is attributed to the sage Śāṇḍilya. The connection given by

the original tradition to this name appears to be questionable. But what is

there in name? The text is found in two works; in a Brāhmaṇa and in an

Upaniṣad.14 The demarcating lines between the two genres are indeed not

fixed. And just this situation conforms to the fact that here is a point where

the trends of thoughts of the Brāhmaṇas merge with those of the Upaniṣads.

The point emerges as something new, as something of a special type from the

surroundings in which this section is found in the Brāhmaṇa. No word is

wasted on rites with which one is otherwise concerned there. Instead of the

cold, stale rigidity, the didactic pedantry of the Brāhmaṇa tradition, we have

here an electrifying vivacity, emanating from a soul that itself is enraptured

and abiding in profound spectacle. A mass of attributes and metaphors paint

with wonderful vividness the desire of the speaker to come closer and closer

with his words to what he cannot express with words.15 The passage in the

version of the Brāhmaṇa-text reads as under:

"Brahman is the only truth: let one worship it. Man consists of volition

alone. He departs from this world with volition, he reaches that world depart-

ing with such volition. Let him, therefore, worship the Self (ātman): thought

is his nature, breath his body, light his form, ether his Self-containing desire,

as quick as thought of real thinking, real clinging, containing all odours,

containing all juices, working through all regions of the world, penetrating

this universe, worldless, unconcerned. Like a grain of rice or barley or millet

or a seed of millet, so is the mind inside the Self, golden like the smokeless

37

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

the right volition for the right goal. The right volition is directed towards the

Self. Now the worship of the Self is recommended like the worship of Brah-

man recommended at the beginning: for the second time a characteristic

leitmotiv of "worship". But there is no doubt that Brahman and Self are

considered as identical. This is abundantly confirmed by the other version of

the verse which adds towards the end "this is Brahman" after the words

"this is my Self" (in the Upaniṣad: "this is my Self within my heart").

Then follows the glorification of Self in its intellectual nature as light.

Many features of this wonderful hymn are based on the concepts of earthly-

human selfhood. But its basic nature is elevated to a universal vastness and

to an all-surpassing universal height. The Self is as small as the subtile and yet

greater than the greatest. The universal Self is my Self. By saying this, my

Self is shown the goal and it is assured a place. The words at the end "I shall

reach this Self departing from here" correspond clearly to the introduction

where it was said that one "reaches the otherworld after departing (from this

world)" according to one's own volition. There was a question inherent in it:

what is my volition? Where will it lead me? Now an answer is found for this

question.

It would appear to be contradictory that one's own Self should be the

highest Self, and yet it is said, "I shall reach this Self after departing from

here": what was just a reality and what was today is removed to the future.

The solution for the contradiction—as far as it is possible—cannot yet be

sought here. It needs a coherent contemplation on how the relationship of

the Absolute Being with the world in which it appears is represented and how

it is tried to convey the unity and the plurality. The one who speaks—and not

we—could hardly have become aware of the riddles left unsolved here. "There

is no doubt" for him. It was already mentioned that the end points back to the

beginning, to the glorification of Brahman as the only real protecting us

against any misgiving and failure. Thus there is peace over everything.

Anxieties of seeking have come to rest in this peace. There is guarantee of

imperishable existence.

THE ABSOLUTE AND ITS RELATION TO THE WORLD

The Problem of Unity and Plurality

In its search for an alternative, the thought, groping for it slowly from a

sombre fantasy, had covered one station in its journey. And yet, the welter

of shadowy distortions through which it moved had not disappeared, and it

did not seem that it would disappear soon. But a new light had entered. At

first only for moments. Flickering and again dying, but dim in every respect,

only intermittently staying on. Another image of a different style had emerged

into the focus in place of Indra and Agni or magical powers of sacrificial

science, an idea of all-pervading, all-dominating, all-illumining power, a

centre where incalculable plurality of things found unity and support. A resort

38

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

upon which the world entrusted all its goods to the ego of the thinker and

revealed the very core of its essence as this ego. How should that idea not

attract tremendously the thoughts to itself? It was worth reasoning it out for

its own sake and its connection with the phenomenal world. The actual

significance of this world receded far back against this centre. The world was

only a veil behind which one tried to discover what alone was worth looking

at.

The problem that has been posed here can be called a problem of the one

and the many in accordance with the most conspicuous of the antitheses

between Brahman-Ātman and the world. And in such a way that the interest

of the observer is focused predominantly on the One. Other contradictions

were subject to this antithesis, or appeared at least on the horizon. Such juxta-

positions of contradictory pairs of catagories or those going into one another

in some sort of a correlativity often dominate the thinking as leitmotivs on

the wide stretches of its path. They offer themes to the thinking, and in work-

ing them out, it progresses. But it is not always possible without considera-

tion of such contradictions in which there is often a sort of animosity in

assuming a trait of toughness and intransigency. For the thinkers of the

Upaniṣads, the antithesis between suffering and conquering suffering and bliss

was connected with the antithesis between plurality and unity, between dying

and immortality, between what one had and what one longed for. One was

not far from developing the antithesis between the perishable and imperish-

able into the one between becoming and being and also perhaps the one between

appearance and reality. Further, the pair of catagories, matter and form, or at

least something very close to it, could become a factor in these trends of

thought. And the conception of the Supreme Being as Ātman had to prompt

one to work with the antithesis between the subject and the object. This anti-

thesis can be further described as a type of antagonism between the one who

sees but does not act and the one who acts but does not see. But most

important was the problem of One and Many emerging straightaway from

the pre-history, the One as an animating, illuminating power in the Many.

The phenomenal world is seen as a plurality. The One, therefore, could abide

only behind it. It had to be the one that is behind a veil, and the other, the veil.

We, of course, come across many aspects which have not emerged from

the prevalent basis idea, but which were taken over from the older masses of

concepts in the descriptions of the One in the Upaniṣads. They could some-

times fit well into the new thoughts and sometimes not. This will be illustrated

later. We shall disregard these aspects for the time being so that we can

concentrate on those forms alone in which the idea appears without any

interference.

The One "All"-animating

The One that animates many. The aspects it offers mean predominantly,

as it can be expected, that it brings, on the one hand, life to all. On the other

39

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

hand, it brings to all life. But by this what is given is only a completely un-

certain classification of masses of ideas which are really merging constantly

with one another on both the sides. Let us nevertheless be guided by this

distinction for a few steps on our path. But let us also be prepared to en-

counter other problems leading us into new directions.

To begin with, let us pursue the first of the two motifs.

We encounter here again a peculiar, yet basically conceivable, duality of

the point of view. First of all, the all-pervading might and grandeur of Brah-

man capable of all effects was expressed in predicates whose leitmotiv is

nothing else but the "all".

The hymn of Śāṇḍilya (p. 36) where the highest Being is called "rich in

all aroma, rich in all juices, interwoven through all regions, pervading this

All" is an example of this motif. But then it points towards the second direc-

tion when the words "silent, unconcerned" follow. For the first, the following

may be quoted: "This Self is indeed Brahman. It consists of knowledge, it

consists of mind, of breath, of seeing, of hearing, of earth, of water, of wind,

of ether, of heat, of no heat, of desire, of no desire, of anger, of no anger,

of right and of wrong; it consists of all things."17 As "heat and no heat", "anger

and no anger" are transferred to Brahman here, one also likes to characterise

its universal wealth and universal ability by opposite pairs:

"This moves. This moves not.

This is near. This is far.

It is within all existence.

And it is outside of all this."

Positive and Negative Expressions. The "No, no"

On the other hand, equally stronger negations are opposed to such expres-

sions of intensive and extensive affirmations: every content, every quality

one would like to ascribe to the Brahman is denied to it. The motif of "not"

and "un" is juxtaposed with the motif of "All". Contradictory attributes are

simultaneously heaped and simultaneously rejected.

Perhaps it is important to note the distinction : the thought of the Brahman

active in the life of the world having all forms is predominant there, and the

thought of the Brahman being alone with itself and enthroned in its peaceful

solitude is predominant here. I do not think that the phenomenon is rooted in

this. Here, it is not the question of looking towards different directions alone.

What is seen in the same direction permitted that double interpretation.

Affirmations expressed in a somewhat simple tone could be expressed more

perfectly with a richer tone by using negations: that the Highest Being is

untouched by any sort of restrictions in individual forms of existence and

action; that the other forms denied to it would be opposed to these. Brahman

was allowed to be tied to no single existence so that it could control all

existence and grasp it within itself. The tendency emerging thus towards a

negave expacision was further accentuated by the fact that in magic and its

priestly stylizing one was fully convinced that the hidden is more effective,

more disingenuished than what is obvious: and what can hide more profoundly

than neations? And further, one showed here preference to using paradoxes.

It is, sa course, not peculiar only to the Indian spirit, but also to everything

earth that approaches mysticism. An Indian mind tends to reject what is

straightforward, what is coarse-grained massive and evade it ingeniously. It

can be understood from all this that the expressions giving the universal

abundance of the Highest Being and appearance of void were readily seized

particularly in India and coined in the briefest and keenest form. Even these

negations lauded the grandeur of the Brahman, and an appreciative sympathy

for this mode of glorification was not missing.

The sage Yājñavalkya repeats not less than four times—in part even for

the fifth time—words which were obviously considered as the most important

expression of the profoundest mystery in one of the Upaniṣads, in one of the

Bṛhadāraṇyakas, which may be called classical among all the Upaniṣads.18

“It is the Ātman who is called: No, no. He is incomprehensible, for he

cannot be comprehended, indestructible, for he cannot be destroyed, he can-

not clung, for one cannot cling to him, unbound; he does not hesitate, he

suffers no harm.” Of course, negations coming after the starting sentence

eliminate only the imperfections of Ātman. But the first starting words them-

selves negate altogether any certitude. The Upaniṣad explains, “For there is

nothing higher above him, ‘So it is not’ ”. Can one speak here more boldly,

the thought ventures? It is also the language of the Christian mysticism at its

highest zenith. The “Ātman that is called No, no!”—is the god of whom

Scotus Eriugena says, “Deus propter excellentiam non immerito Nihil voca-

tur”. And Angelus Silesius, “God is sheer nothingness”.19 Or is here even the

slightest difference felt? A last indelible trace of that very content, of those

very affirmations, of which the negation is made void, clings ultimately, all the

same, to the negation which is devoid of content. We have on the one hand the

western world of ideas, and on the other, the conception of the world of the

Vedic liturgists and sacrificers. Even the Brahman did not stop in all sublimity

of its “No, no” to be a creation of Indian thinking, it could not also stop

there... In another passage, the Upaniṣad puts in the mouth of Yājñavalkya

the words, “It is this, O Gārgī, what the Brāhmaṇas call the Imperishable. It

is neither coarse nor fine, not short not long, without blood and without fat,

without shadow, without darkness, without wind and without ether, without

adhering, without taste and without odour, without eye and without ear,

without speech and without mind, without heat, without breath, without

mouth, without measure, having no inside and having no outside—

There is nothing that is devoured by it,

And there is no one who devours it.”

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

41

A verse speaks of Brahman :

“Different from the origin, it is said,

Different it is from non-origin;20

We have heard thus from the sages,

Who to us have explained it.”—

If now the universality of Brahman, its capacity to lend any sort of form

to all that exists is revealed thus, may be in heaping of all attributes, may be,

in rejecting every single of them: can one grasp this all-sidedness, or if one

wants, this no-sidedness, also where it is emphasised that it is nothing but light,

life and movement what is bestowed by the Brahman upon the things—where

it is thus the question of attributing to it a certain mode of action, under, at

least, the silent negation of the opposite mode?

We shall have to come back to this question again later when we shall have

a better notion of what the Upaniṣads teach us about the relationship of the

Brahman with the world.

The One All-“animating”

Now the trend of thought referring to this relationship renders—to remind

us of the classification suggested above (p. 39)—the all-animating characteristic

of the Brahman apparent besides the all-animating.

To begin with, I shall highlight one passage. It describes the relationship

of the Brahman with the world in a dispassionate language which is devoid of

any poetic embellishment and emphasis of inner participation. The text

obviously comes from the older phases of speculation with which we are

dealing now. It is in a Brāhmaṇa.22 Even its connection with the ideas of

belief in god and sacrifice—by dropping these elements we may falsify the

genuine character of the passage—is consistent with our assumption that it

is of ancient origin.

“The Brahman was indeed this (All) in the beginning; It created the gods.

Having created the gods it made them ascend these worlds: Agni (Fire) this

world, Vāyu (Wind-god) the air, Sūrya (Sun-god) the sky. And the deities

who are above these, it made them ascend the worlds which are above

these . . . But the Brahman itself went up to the sphere beyond. On reaching

the sphere beyond, it considered: how can I go back and descend into these

worlds? It then descended by means of these two: form and name. Whatever

has a name, that is name. And that again which has no name and which one

knows by its form (and says) ‘this is form’: that is form. As far as there are

form and name so far, indeed, extends this (All). These are the two great

forces of the Brahman. He who knows these two great forces of the Brahman

becomes himself a great force. These are the two wonderful manifestations of

the Brahman. He who knows these two wonderful manifestations of the

Brahman becomes himself a great manifestation. One of these two is the

greater, namely form. For whatever is name, is also form. He who knows the

greater of these two, becomes greater than he whom he wishes to surpass in

greatness. In the beginning, indeed, the gods were mortal, and only when they

had become possessed of the Brahman, they were immortal. When he (the

sacrificial priest) brings sprinkling sacrifice23 to mind—form being mind inas-

much as it is by mind one knows, 'This is form'—he thereby obtains form.

And when he brings sprinkling sacrifice to speech—name being speech inas-

much as it is by speech that he mentions the name—he thereby obtains name.

As far as there are form and name, so far indeed extends this All. He obtains

all this. And—the all being the imprishable—imperishable merit and imperish-

able world thus accrue to him.

The passage shows that the Absolute Being is on one side all by itself in

its solitude: at first before the creation of the world, and then again retreating

in its "otherworldly sphere". It narrates, on the other hand, how it creates

the normal world and enters it with the help of its power.

This suggests a certain structure of the masses of thoughts.

We are indeed inevitably compelled to arrange disorderly and half-

orderly concepts of the ancients, at every step, into an order which we have

to select ourselves—what is meant here is an order and not a system—. This

means in fact that something alien is carried into what is already there. This

interposing of the alien is basically also present where a principle of order

which occasionally emerges in the texts, but then which is again forgotten,

is understood and treated by us, as if it really mattered for the ancients. We

have to be aware of such inevitable pitfalls. But let us try to follow as closely

as possible the ancient world of ideas in what now comes, as we have done in

the passage just quoted. We shall then try to sort out from one another the

action of the Brahman-Ātman in its being all by itself in its solitude. Besides,

it appears to be proper—since it fits easily with the trend of our argument

followed so far—to restrict ourselves first of all to the discussions of these

spheres of thoughts and reserve our future observations for the second. First

of all, the ancient thinkers became aware of the absolute Being in its connec-

tions, above all, with the world of plurality. Then only, the thoughts about

the loneliness of the Absolute in its solitude in the otherworld—as far as the

differentiation between priority and posterity, which is obviously only quite

uncertain, is admissible here—must have come after this knowledge.

The text under consideration relates the Absolute Being to the world of

plurality as its creator as the one entering and forming it. Even here, the one

is hardly on the same level with the other. The origin and the total impression

of these masses of thoughts shows that first of all, the most prominent role of

the Highest Being is to abide in the things, forming, animating and guiding

them. The distant past of the world-creation is secondary.

The Brahman entered the things with its "two great forces", form and

name. This suggests a similarity with both the attributes of Spinoza's god,

extensio and cogitatio. But I think, it is wrong. We have before us here an

altogether different thought, and that too, in a different style. "Name and

form"—constantly in this order—make a permanent pair; they also appear

thus in the most ancient literature.24 There is no doubt that the same primitive

concept is connected here with it as in the primordial antiquity. Like the form

of a thing, its name is also a real and most highly significant element of its

being. As such, it is persistently used in magic. Like in the Israelian account

of creation, it is not sufficient that the things be created, but that they must

get their names. Again in our text, the creator enters the world and brings

not only form but also name to what does not have form and name. It is clear

on the whole that one seeks here to work with categories the Europeans

would name matter and form. It is true that the concept of matter to be com-

prehended by the formative activity of the creator, reached through a conse-

quence, was not fully penetrated: the worlds and the gods ruling over

them do have their own peculiarities. It is their characteristic to get a form

before the Brahman brings them name and form. And even otherwise preser-

ved quite in the style of the old faith in magic, how the Brahman enters here

physically the worlds with its "two great forces", its "two wonderful mani-

festations", remains far removed from the mature handling of the catagories

matter and form.

The creative power entering what is created and giving it a form described

in our text is now often discussed in a similar fashion. It is clear that we have

here a question of the concept logically recorded by these thinkers. It is the

most important in their conception of the world. Let us, just to emphasise

this point, quote one of the parallel texts. The sage Śvetaketu teaches his

son:25

"In the beginning, my dear son, this (All) was just sat, one only without

a second. Of course, a few people say, 'In the beginning, was just asat, one

only, without a second; and the sat was born from this asat'. But how could

it be, my dear? thus he spoke; how could the sat be born from the asat? On

the contrary, my dear, in the beginning, this (All) was just sat, one only,

without a second. It thought: 'I would like to be many; let me procreate

myself.' It produced heat.26 The heat thought: 'I would like to be many; let

me procreate myself.' It produced water. Therefore, whenever a person

experiences heat or he perspires, then water (of perspiration or tears) is

produced from the heat. The water thought: I would like to be many; let me

procreate myself. So it produced food.27 Therefore, whenever it rains, then

there is abundant food. So food is produced from water . . . That deity (sat,

that which is) thought: Let me enter these three deities (i.e., heat, water and

food) with this living Self (Ātman) and separate out name and form. Let me

make each one of these threefold. That deity entered into these three deities

with this living Self and separated out name and form. It made each one of

them threefold. Now, my dear, know from me how each of these deities

becomes threefold." There follows now an explanation—the text is here, as

one can expect, not free from confusion—how there is each time a red, a

white and a black "form" in fire, sun, moon and lightning: these are the

"forms" of heat, resp., of water and food.28 "Thus the firehood of fire (like-

wise, sunhood of the sun, etc.) disappeared; it clings only to the word,29 it is

a metamorphosis, it is naming. The reality is just the three forms. It was just

this the ancients, the great masters, greatly learned in sacred lore knew. They

said: 'No one now will bring up to us what has not been heard of, what has

not been thought of, what has not been understood. For, they knew it from

these forms. They knew that whatever appeared red was the form of heat.

Whatever appeared white was the form of water. Whatever appeared dark

was the form of food. Whatever appeared uncertain was a combination of

these deities.'30

Even in this conception of the world, carried rather too far, the primordial

being—called here the “sat (that which is)”—as it can be seen, gives a dis-

tinctive characteristic to the world created by it with the help of “name and

form”, while it enters this world “with this living Ātman”. And even here,

as discussed earlier, one did not conclude that the world must have been

absolutely formless before. It was classified from the beginning in accordance

with the basic elements of heat, water, food, or of red, white and black. We

shall find again these three elements or constituents later in the important

trends of thoughts of the future.

Infinitely Big and Infinitely Small

The decisive basic concept now that the divine is inherent in all creatures

through all the expanses of the world is expressed most emphatically in the

Upaniṣads in countless number of times and repeated in new phrases. “The

one dwelling in the world is different from the world, whom the world does

not know, whose body is the world, who controls the world from within: he

is your Self, the inner ruler, the immortal.”31 After this, what is said of the

world is repeated for water, fire and all elements, for heaven and for world-

regions. Another edition does not forget to include all Vedas and all sacri-

fices. Further, human powers and senses, breath, eye and mind and “all

beings”. It is true that gradations are seen here. It is once said that man is a

being who is mostly full of Brahman. One reads in another text that weeds

and trees contain only juices. There is awareness in animals directed only

towards hunger and thirst. But Ātman is the most perceptible in men : he looks

to tomorrow beyond today; he longs for immortality with his mortal nature:

we can refer only in passing to this central idea which infuses the speculation

of the Upaniṣads with life.32

What particularly concerns the texts is the question how to imagine the

presence of Ātman inside the beings with respect to space. The ambiguousness

of the concept is seen here sometimes by positive and sometimes by negative

terms, as we have seen above (p. 39) in the two-sided description of Ātman.

It was considered as befitting its glory to imagine it to be omnipresent,

encompassing all distances and penetrating all beings in its complete dimension.

On the other hand, the negation could appear more exalted than such affirma-

tion: the Imperishable had to celebrate its highest triumph by living in a

subtile space and yet reigning over all expanses. Here we have one conception,

there another. Or one allows both to be expressed wilfully at the same time.

Both are correct, and precisely in their contradiction the whole wealth of the

highest being is revealed. 'He entered here', it is said of the Ātman,33 “to the

very tips of the finger-nails, like a razor fitting in a razor-case, or like a

scorpian(?) in its nest.” The Ātman abides in the things like the salt which is

dissolved in water: one cannot take it out, but wherever one tastes water, it

is salty. There is a talk about the tree: wherever one cuts it, it drips, for it is

alive. That part which is forsaken by life, withers. “Pervaded by the living

Ātman, the tree stands firm vigorously and rejoicing.” But one reads in the

same section very soon: there are infinitesimal seeds in the fruit of the tree;

if one breaks them, one does not see anything. “My son, the great Nyagrodha-

tree that exists there consists of this subtile essence.” Then there is another

text with a very clear emphasis on this wilful contradiction: it may be quoted

here, although it speaks more of the size of Ātman than its being inside the

things: “This is my Ātman inside my heart, smaller than a grain of rice or

barely or mustard or millet or a millet-seed. That is my Ātman inside my

heart, greater than the earth, greater than air, greater than sky, greater than

these worlds.”

One could be inclined to conceive this merging of contradictions of the

greatest and the smallest in space as a search for a spatial expression for a

spaceless existence. This could be easily confirmed by expressions like this:

“The unborn Ātman, great and imperishable, is free from impurity, beyond

ether.” “Ether” (ākāśa) is in a sense an expression for space which is consider-

ed as filled by this finest substance. It is important to consider the really pro-

found and basic difference of all these concepts from what we call spaceless-

ness. For the thinkers of the Upaniṣads, it is in no way a question of some-

thing that cannot be ascertained for the form of the notion of space, which

is present, say, in the nature of Ātman, nor of an existence in a world other

than the one of space. It is hardly probable for such an ancient phase of

thinking that one might have known to free oneself in this sense from being

committed to the idea of space. But what those thinkers meant was a

completely sovereign exaltedness of the Ātman beyond all imprisonment in

the fetters of here or there, of greatness or smallness, an exaltedness remaining

within the spatial form of existence which was obvious for them.34 One would

like to find a similarity with the concepts of play of supernatural magic

powers with space which were, in fact, very close to that age. The Ātman has

something of the yogin who can make himself infinitely small and infinitely

big. Living of the Highest Being “beyond the ākāśa” does not also certainly

mean the state of being freed from all spatial existence, but of wonderful

reaching, so to say, into a space beyond the space, in spheres not reached by

the movement which fills the space surrounding us.35

We have, however, strayed into other trends of thoughts from our consi-

deration of Ātman's existence in the things. But this could not have been

avoided. It must be repeatedly emphasised that we do not want to force the

old masses of concepts in a system that is alien to them. We are trying to

follow their concatenation, as the texts invite us to do it, to try to clear

up the confusion and to look for continuation and conclusion of trends of

thoughts expressed in them.

The Inner Driving Force, Origin of Values

Let us now return to the functioning of the Supreme Being in things.

The Supreme Being has other characteristics in addition to its characte-

ristic of developing greatest effects while abiding in a subtile space. It is the

most subtile, the most incomprehensible. As it invisibly makes the whole

tree grow in the inside of a fruit-seed appearing to be empty, so also it is the

invisible that is felt as heat in the body. It is what is heard as humming when

the ears are closed. It is the mysterious power on account of which the inno-

cent does not get burns even through red-hot axe in god's judgment.

Hiding in such incomprehensible subtility in the depth, the Brahman does

not merely give name and form to the creatures. It also moves them, rules

over them—more in peaceful tranquillity than in storm and stress “of changing

activity and of ardent life”. It is the “inner ruler”. It is within the earth in all

elements, its life is their life. Yājñavalkya speaks to Gārgī:38 “By the command

of this Imperishable, verily O Gārgī, the sun and the moon stand apart. By

the command of this Imperishable, O Gārgī, heaven and earth stand apart.

By the command of this Imperishable, O Gārgī, moments, hours, days,

nights, half-months, months, seasons and years, all stand apart. By the

command of this Imperishable, O Gārgī, some rivers flow to the east from the

snowy mountains, others to the west, or to any other quarters. By the com-

mand of this Imperishable, O Gārgī, men praise those who give, the gods

praise the sacrificer and the Fathers sit near the ladle.'’37

“Through fear of Him the wind blows,

Through fear of Him the sun rises;

Through fear of Him both Agni and Indra

And Death as the fifth speed along.”

When he does not want, the fire cannot consume the straw, the wind cannot

blow it away. He is the father who is in the womb of every mother. He is in

every son who is born. He becomes himself a father's son. He breathes in

while inspiring, breathes out while expiring. When the eye and the ear are

directed towards the things, he functions in them as the spirit (literally: man).

They serve only “for seeing and hearing.” He lets the one do the right action

whom He wants to guide upwards from these worlds. He lets the one do the

wrong action, whom He wants to lead downwards into the abyss.” He brings

to the creatures joy as the home of all joys: “the other creatures live from a

particle of this joy.” “Not for love of the husband is a husband dear to the

wife, not for love of the wife is a wife dear to the husband, but for love of the

Ātman, who—expressed in our language—is the origin of all values. One

text38 uses an obscure and a profound language. It uses expressions for the

breath (prāna) which are otherwise used for Brahman-Ātman. What is meant

is this: the Supreme Being animates the world only with one part of its Self,39

while the other part clings to itself—:

“The swan does not pull out one leg emerging from the flood,

Had it done it, there wouldn't have been today, nor tomorrow.

No night, no day; the dawn would not appear any more”—

a verse that reminds one of that word of a Christian mystic: “Had the god not

been in all things, the nature would neither be active, nor would it have

desire.”

At times it is felt that the reminiscence of the magic power of Brahman

entering the things and ruling over them becomes apparent in the older

meaning of the word in this animating and dominating presence of the

Supreme Being inside the things. But above all, it is the relationship between

body and soul indicated evidently by the concept of Ātman which inspires

here the imagination, as it is revealed several times in the expressions quoted

just now and which can also sufficiently become evident from the texts. The

question becomes urgent whether one has ascribed rhythm and unity, plan

and purpose to the movements imparted by this soul to the gigantic body of

the world inhabited by it. Why does the Imperishable command that some

rivers flow to the east and the others to the west? That day and night alternate

and the dawns appear? Why does the Divine see in the earthly eye, hear in

the earthly ear, live in the earthly life? We shall encounter further the closely

related question: why did that Being create the world? We get miserable and

meaningless answers to these questions. In fact, we do not get any answer at

all. The world-activity guided by Ātman is accepted as a fact. That the

purpose of the world would be realized through it: There is such a decisive

historical observation in the thought that it is not expected that we find it

expressed here.

If we look back, the answer to the question about the dispositions bestow-

ed upon the all-animating Being from the fact that it animates every being is:

it is an animating power; it is light, knowledge, joy. The universality of its

nature is thus assumed in a certain way. This light is not also darkness, this

joy not sorrow. We must discuss later how the question about the origin of

sorrow and suffering was dealt with. It is to be assumed for the time being

that the Supreme Being is not neutral with respect to those contradictions.

It stands on the positive side.40

A sublimity peculiar only to it belongs to light. This light is Ātman: The

Upaniṣads have found for this many a profound word. Often they use

expressions like this:

“Gods give homage to it as the light of all lights, as immortality.” Thus

there is light in the world; Ātman is the light of all lights. Quite similar to it,

there is a passage repeated twice with the same figure of speech : "The form of

its worship (see above p. 23) is : The real of the real. The breath-powers are

verily real. It is their real." It is also said that the Brahman is the one who :

"understands the breath of the breath, the eye of the eye, the ear of

the ear and the mind of the mind."

We could make a collection of several such expressions which elevate, to

some extent, the Brahman to the second and the highest degree of reality and

power by increasing its latent strength. I think what is meant here is : it is

related—irrespective of all differences which nobody will overlook—to the

concept which is at the root of Platonic doctrine of ideas. In Plato, the earthly,

perishable, beautiful thing is beautiful because it contributes to a great extent

to the eternal idea of beauty through a strange synthesis. Similarly, the light

is here the real emanation of a being which is only in the highest sense light

and real. One has to rise to it, if one wants to see light and truth in absolute

perfection.

With that we have indeed extended the Brahman appearing in the world

over to a sphere in which its consideration points out constantly to only one

thing : Brahman in its state of solitude. But this is not the place to speak more

about it.

The World-Creator

Several passages we have considered so far (pp. 41.43) showed that the divine

animator was at the same time a world-creator. A second principle, indepen-

dent of him, but formed with his creative power, is not opposed to him, a

matter contrasting an equal and similarly an eternal existence with his power.

But he alone accomplishes both. He at first creates the world which at least

approximates the uncertainty of mere matter (p. 41). Then secondly he enters

the world creating and animating it. It can be understood that both were

attributed to the same almightyness. To accept the matter not created by

Brahman would have meant renouncing attempts of the thought to achieve

unity. And what could be more comprehensible than the fact that now the

role in its whole dimension was transferred to Brahman, to Ātman? The

ancient legends of creation distributed this role alternatively to many beings—

to be simply there at the beginning of things and then creating the worlds. But

now it can be felt that the trends of thoughts in which this idea of the Supreme

Being had developed, aimed rather, as it is their nature, at attributing to this

Supreme Being more the animating and dominating presence inside the world

than the creation of the world. So it becomes evident that this thinking proved

less productive with respect to the problem of creation and persisted here

particularly in traditional paths.

This is clearly seen in the history of creation given in an Upaniṣad.41

"In the beginning this All was Ātman alone in the form of a man (puruṣa).

Looking around he saw nothing else but himself. He said first, 'This is I.'

Thence arose the name 'I'. Therefore, even today, who one is addressed, says

at first just, 'It is I' and then pronounces other name he has . . . . He was afraid.

Therefore, one who is alone, is afraid. He thought, 'There is nothing else but

myself. Of what I am then afraid?' Thus his fear was gone. Of what should

he be afraid? Indeed, it is from a second that fear arises. But he had no

delight. Therefore, one who is alone has no delight. He desired a second. Now

he was indeed as large as a woman and a man closely embraced. He caused

his Self to fall into two pieces. Therefrom arose a husband and a wife42 . . . . He

copulated with her. Therefrom human beings were produced. Then she

thought, 'How does he copulate with me after producing me from himself?

Well, let me hide myself.' Then she became a cow. But the other became a

bull and copulated with her; thenfrom the cattle were produced." In the same

way follows the birth of horses, donkeys and other animals. Thus he creates

everything that copulates down to ants. Then he realised: 'I, indeed, am this

creation, for I have created all this'. Thence arose creation.43 And he who

knows this comes to be in that creation of his." Then it is narrated how the

creator created "womb from his mouth and fire from his hands". Whatever

is moist that he created from semen, and that is Soma.

"This is the super-creation of Brahman. It is a super-creation because he

created the gods, his superiors; likewise that, being mortal, he created the

immortals. Therefore, it was a super-creation. Indeed, he who knows this

comes to be in that super-creation of his."

Obviously, Ātman has pushed itself with a certain force into an ancient

sphere of ideas alien to its real nature to appear as a world-creator, rendering

to this portion of the text a conspicuous stamp of bizarrerie. Certainly,

all the genuine images given to us by the texts. But this horrible magical being

which becomes man and wife, bull and cow, he-ass and she-ass, hides from

itself, copulates with itself,44 appears to be less competent to have the sublime

name Ātman. How shallow this is compared to the trends of thoughts we

shall be discussing later : about the Ātman abiding in solitude in its empire

not subject to separation of subject and object in its loneliness, its universal

Unity, and thus exalted over consciousness and thinking. Here on the other

hand, the Ātman says : it is afraid of itself;45 it has desires. Indeed, it is brought

down to the level of the mortals, and it is a "super-creation" when it creates

immortal gods.

A real answer can hardly be expected from the Upaniṣads to the question

how in the equilibrium of the Supreme Being the first impulse to movement,

to creation could arise, as Śaṅkara, Plotinus and Schelling have been able to

give. The efforts directed here to that problem are particularly feeble : the

uneasy loneliness befalling the Ātman has to be enough to motivate world-

creation—by the way, another passage (see p. 43) names, quite in the

manner of Brāhmaṇa-texts the desire of the Supreme Being as such motive.

And this is not more profound : "I desire to be many; I desire to procreate

50

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

myself"; and a later Upaniṣad speaks in the same sense of its desire "of enjoying truth and falsehood". It is remarkable that the continuation of the story just narrated about the relationship of Ātman with the world created by it is unmistakably on a much higher plane in its thought content: the Ātman-doctrine was differently equipped to speak of the life in the world than to speak of the creation of the world.

The word repeatedly used in the text for "create" is srj—. It has the concept of letting something loose, discharging something that is firmly held, something that is inside. This word is preferably used when it refers to the shooting of a dart or to speech, to a race-horse that is allowed to run, or to the cows whose cowshed is opened, to the rain released by god or by rain-magic from the enclosure of the clouds, or to the rivers whose course is opened by Indra so that they can flow from the depths of the rocks over the land. Thus creation is considered as letting something emerge from the inside of a being which is creating it. But here, as it can be understood, the question remains unasked whether and how what is created, existed in this inside. A large number of imageries and similes associate the idea of creation with the situations from day to day life in which something emerges or something is released from something else. The world comes out of the Ātman like the sound from the beating of a drum, from blowing of a conch-shell and from playing of a flute. As the clouds of smoke go out of the fire, so also all Vedas, all sciences, all Upaniṣads come out from the expirations of the Supreme Being. It may be noted that in passages like this—in deviation from the history of creation discussed above—the Absolute lets the creatures be directly produced from itself: not at first a substratum which is then formed from a second act. Here an understandable variant. "Just as the spider coming out from its web,46 just like the sparks coming out of fire, all breath-powers come out of this Ātman, all worlds, all gods, all creatures." Also the plants sprouting from the earth, hair growing from the head and body serve as comparison. But as one can understand, the comparison of giving birth is the most prominent. It is in fact more than a comparison: creation of creatures is just an act of giving birth. Common to all these conceptions is: what is created stands there as a creature, and it is different from the creator. The following passage is very characteristic.47 It is from a Brāhmaṇa and not from an Upaniṣad. It also speaks of Prajāpati, the old world-creator, and not of Ātman. But it can be used as a clear valid evidence to know how the identity of the creatures was conceived or the distinction of the one releasing and the one released coming in question in the act of creation, i.e. in "releasing". It is said of Prajāpati that he "created all beings, what breathes and what breathes not, both gods and human beings. When he created all beings, he felt tired, and fear of death befell him. Then he thought, 'How can I pour out all these beings again in my Self? (ātman), put them back in my Self? How can it happen that I shall be Self of all these beings?' " After this, the creator, after several futile efforts, perceived that "all beings are embodied in the threefold knowledge (Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Sāma-veda)".48 By ritualistic magic, "he poured this threefold knowledge in his Self,

51

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

put it into his Self. In this (act), he became the Self of all these beings." The act of "releasing" this—this is seen here clearly—emptying the one who releases, lends to the one who is released an independent characteristic, alien to the releaser and opposed to him. The strangeness can then be conquered. But it is very much there at the beginning.—

The position of the point of view reached here in the whole of this movement of thought can be understood.

Everything works towards the unity of the conception of the world. The need for it combats, now more and more successfully, the impression of unlimited plurality of the surrounding world, forcing itself upon the natural consciousness.

The older periods, devoted to this impression without resisting it, had begun by shifting unity, above all, to a place where one could easily have at one's disposal a space which was not commandeered by plurality. And that was at the beginning of things. The unity of the creator (Prajāpati, etc.) tied a ribbon around the plurality of all that was created. This plurality itself, although it was washed early itself by various streams striving for unity, stood firmly rooted in the most ancient habitudes, confirmed by impressions of every moment.

Remaining Also in the Reality of Many Besides the One

Now this striving for unity wins a great victory: a Supreme Being is thought of. It, inheriting the role from Prajāpati, does not only create plurality, but is also inherent in it, above all, forming and animating it. With that, the bond of unity keeping all things together has strengthened itself quite powerfully. It reaches in and through the present from the past of the world-beginning. The highest degree of reality is reserved for the One alone, the "real of the real". The plural, enjoying only a dim existence, gets life when the One lives in it. We shall have to discuss later how becoming one with the unity as a goal on one's path corresponds to the unity at the beginning of things: so that it is the One "whence these beings are born, live, into which on dying they enter in peace".49 How deep has sunk the significance of what is not the One. But in all that, there is no talk about denying the existence of plurality, about absolutely suppressing this existence to a mere appearance. This is shown by everything that is described above. If the plurality were to be an illusory appearance, one could not have said anything about the world-creation. There had to be a course of events in its place in which that appearance—as far as it was not without a beginning—would have arisen. There could not have been a talk about the Supreme Being entering the creation. Then the earth and the other elements would not have been called the body of that god "who, dwelling in the earth, is different from it... who controls the earth from within" (above p. 44), Those contrasting concepts in which the Brahman is inherent first in the smallest place in the centre of the individual beings and then penetrating these in their whole expansion would have become

altogether unnecessary. The similes like those of the salt dissolving in water

(p. 45 above) would have missed the mark. And the one would have been

allowed to say the least that "the fire-flint of the fire-the sunshine of the

sun-alone clings to the word, that it is a metamorphosis, that it is a term and

the three forms alone ('heat, water and food') are the real" (p. 43 above). With

that, a substantiality is ascribed to those basic elements from which the crea-

tion is built in a description whose intention it is to juxtapose the substantial

with a passing phenomenon. And this substantiality indeed has to await the

arrival of Ātman in it to start its life perfectly and vividly in the toil of the

world.

To summarise briefly, what is taught is this. Besides the One exceptional

Being there is a plurality of those created by it. This plurality gets form, life

and light from this incomparable Being which has entered it.

This is the belief which is confirmed in the Upaniṣads by the strongest

series of harmonising evidences. These evidences repeat partially the same

basic concepts, but also look at them partially from different angles. They

treat different problems each time in the light of these concepts thus giving a

particularly strong and unshakable evidence for their proof.—

Identity of the One and the Many

But the thought discussed above, which is no doubt profound but lacking

in reliable experience, reveals a many-sided vacillation from the trends des-

cribed by it. As if one is looking at a landscape encompassed by a hazy atmos-

phere which makes the thing that is seen glimmer. In one Upaniṣad, the

Supreme Being says, "Verily, I am creation, for I have created all this" (p. 49).

The sentence illustrates how constantly the thought vacillates here. Creator

becomes here creation, in fact, "for" indicates that the second follows from

the first. As we have already mentioned: when two concepts fall into a certain

proximity with each other, the inhibitions hindering their clash easily falls:

what is this, that is that.

Is it then surprising that the One and the Many, the one inherent in the

other and animating it, interchange their roles here and there?

First of all, there appears to be at least an approach made in that direction,

when it is once said,50 that creatures wandering from existence to existence go

into the sat and come out again "like when the honey-bees prepare honey, by

collecting the essences of several trees and reducing the essences to a unity;

as these essences do not know to discriminate: I am the essence of that tree"

I am the essence of that tree"—and a second simile: "These rivers flow, the

eastern towards the east and the western towards the west, they go from ocean

to ocean; they become ocean. As they do not know: I am this river; I am that

river"... The thought here appears to be unmistakably this: the individual

being remains like this for a period separated from the Supreme Being, like

the river separated from the ocean, in its substance not different from that. It

merges with the Supreme Being like the river which merges with the ocean.51

The identity of the One and many appears to be expressed more decisively

in other passages. "This, although it is a triad (it was said: this [All] name,

form and action is verily a triad), it is one, namely this Ātman. And he,

although he is one, he is that triad." Perhaps, it may be noted that there is no

question in this triad of the majority of the world-beings, but of the multipli-

city of the mode of action of this Ātman. Now let us examine the following

sentences. "This is the Brahman. This Kṣatra, these worlds, these gods, these

creatures, this universe, all is this (All) was Brahman. It knew its Self (ātmānam)

only: 'I am the Brahman'. Thus it became this All."—After the reference about the Ātman entering into the

world developed in accordance with "name and form" ("to the very tips of

the finger-nails, like a razor fitting in a razor case", etc. above p. 45), the text

continues, "He cannot be seen, for he is incomplete. When breathing he is

breath by name. When speaking, speech. When seeing, eye by name. When

hearing ear. When thinking, mind. These are only names for his acts. He who

worships only one of these,53 knows him not. For he is apart from this by one

or the other. Let men worship him only as Ātman, for therein are all these

(beings) one." The vagueness of the concept emphasised earlier, or at least of

the expression, is revealed here clearly. Ātman entered at first, in accordance

with the prevalent view, the world of plurality. It would mean that it is inhe-

rent, say, in the eye as "a man (purusa)". This has often been said elsewhere.

Now the Ātman becomes here the eye or the ear. It has not entered the organ

to act, but it itself has become an organ which fulfils the relevant action. Is it

only a brief or a cursory expression for the concept that it is a living force

innate in that organ? It is impossible to judge conclusively on the basis of an

isolated passage. On the whole, however, it is possible that occasionally two

concepts actually merge. The predominant concept is that the Ātman is inhe-

rent in the plurality as the only living and valuable force. Now it is under-

stood as plurality itself. The nuance separating the one concept from the other

is so slight that it is not noticed at all.54 This is all the more so because the

tendency of letting abruptly any entity be All was very much in the blood of

the Brahmanic thinkers from the times of the sacrificial science.

With the step taken here, or better with the mistake committed here, the

importance of the One became greater by a degree. There was now nothing

more in the plurality that was not the One. This reminds me, if I mistake not,

of Spinoza's doctrine of modi.55 According to his doctrine, the finite things

are affectations and conditions of an infinite substance. It is clear that Upani-

ṣads also, like Spinoza, do not refuse to admit here that the world of plurality

is real. The observer did not claim that the One appeared to be wrongly enter-

ing many conditions. But that it has entered these conditions is true, and it

would be a mistake, only if it were to be acknowledged that they individually

had substantiality in them. Thus the passage quoted earlier(p. see above) conti-

nues with the identity of the "triad" and the Ātman: "That is the Immortal veiled

by the real. Ātman56 is indeed the Immortal. Name and form are the real. By

them this breath is veiled." Another passage speaking of Ātman says, "Wor-

ship (upanisad) thereof is: 'the Real of the real.' Breath-powers are indeed

real. He is their Real."57 This means that the plurality surrounding the One is

clearly not characterised as a mirage, but as a reality. As a reality which,

measured by the standard of the absolute greatness, i.e., by the Real of the

real, stands on a lower level. It represents, so to say, an existence of the second

order.58 But yet, it is a reality.—

Plurality Explained as Appearance?

Now we must finally ask whether the last step was also taken now itself in

the great movement of the thought in which the plurality made way for the

unity. Whether the point was reached which was not reached in the expressions

just discussed: plurality is explained as appearance; only unity is reality.

In the later ages, as it is well-known, the advocates of the Vedānta who

based their philosophy on the Upaniṣads and systematised it, found this doctrine

in them and adopted it. Centuries before Śaṅkara, Maṇḍūkyakārikā of

Gauḍapāda gave that famous, oft-repeated simile: Like a rope which is mis-

taken for a serpent in the darkness, vast plurality is mistaken for the divine

Unity:

"That is god's illusory magic by which he deceives himself"—it is the

"Māyā" that magical illusion which is responsible for the empty appearance

of the world-existence. Till real knowledge destroys the deception, the appa-

rent plurality sinks in its void before the Imperishable.

I think, it is not possible that even the age with which we are concerned

here would have reached such an extreme point of the Ātman-doctrine.59

So much appears to be clear at first that the prevalent view of the Upani-

ṣads is different in every case. The Supreme Being created the world. Then it

entered the world created by it. Real, and not imagined, suffering exists—this

is to be discussed later—besides the Supreme Being and its bliss. There is a

real deliverance from this suffering, not a mere waking up from a frightful

dream. Ignorance which obscures real knowledge consists in keeping the

Ātman and its world-dominating power unrecognised. It does not consist

in considering the unreal world as real on account of Māyā.

At the most, so much could be possible that occasionally such thoughts

and ideas expressed often in the Upaniṣads may appear in which the Māyā-

doctrine is anticipated among those emerging and disappearing under the

masses. But even here, I have my doubts. The expressions in the texts60 to

which one has referred, appear to me to be requiring, to a great extent, a

different interpretation. Something remains, which at least permits a different

interpretation. In fact, it recommends it.

A few examples may be given.

Attention will have to be paid to many percepts of the Upaniṣads dealing

with the solitude of the Ātman staying alone in its own empire, away from the

world created by it: with that highest existence in which the identity of the

Self of the one who is redeemed is accomplished and confirmed with the

Supreme Being. There the contradiction between the subject and the object

disappears. So also all knowledge, all consciousness which postulates this

contradiction. One classical passage of an Upaniṣad speaks of it:61 "Where

there is a duality, as it were, there one sees the other, there one smells the

other, there one hears the other, there one speaks to the other, there one thinks

of the other, there one understands the other. Where everything has become

just one's Self (ātmā), then whereby and whom would one smell? Whereby

and whom would one see? Whereby and whom would one hear? Whereby

and to whom would one speak? Whereby and of whom would one think?

Whereby and whom would one understand? Whereby would one know him

knower?"

These sentences come from that conversation between Yājñavalkya and

his wife Maitreyī and it can be called the culminating point of the Upaniṣads.

Maitreyī longs for immortality and she wants to be assured of it. He frightens

her, "There is no consciousness after death." And he explains: where there is

only Ātman, there cannot be any seeing, any thinking, which is indeed not

independent of duality. Does it mean that the world of plurality is rejected,

that it is reduced to a mere appearance? Of course not. It could not come in

the mind of the author of this conversation to dispute that we see, hear, think,

i.e., we live in the world of plurality. When, however, the death leads the

perfect one into that empire where plurality does not reach,62 where the

Ātman is alone in its solitude, then and only then, all seeing and thinking

comes to an end. Yājñavalkya does not say: "consciousness and plurality

which is inseparable from it is a mirage. He says, "There is no consciousness

after death."

The prelude on earth of the condition of a sense of fulfilment in the other-

world is described quite similarly, in fact, partly with the same words in

another passage:63 The mind is not conscious of outside or inside in the deep

sleep. In it "a father is not a father, a mother, not a mother . . . for then he has

passed beyond all sorrows of the heart." "When he does not see", it is said,

"he is still seeing, although he does not see. For there is no cessation of seeing

of a seer because of his imperishability. It is, however, not a second thing,

other than himself and separate, that he may see . . . Where there seems to be

another, there the one might see the other, the one might smell the other . . .

the one might understand the other." Also this is to be understood clearly as

before. The deep sleep leads one to an empire from where the plurality is far

away. The text says quite explicitly: "This is the world of the Brahman". But

this does not mean that the plurality in which the awakened existence moves

is completely rejected. The same argument used here for sleep is now used

for death. The one who has no desire, who is freed from desire, reaches the

highest world on departing from this world. Verses whose initial lines had

occupied our mind in another context now follow with reference to the above:

56

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

57

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

"They who know the breathing of the breath,

The seeing of the eye, the hearing of the ear,

The thinking of the mind, they have recognised

The ancient, primeval Brahman, which the Mind

Alone can perceive and which is free of all plurality.

Death of Death64 is his part,

Who perceives here seeming plurality.

As a unity only is It to be looked upon

The imperishable Eternal."

In no way, I think, is the existence denied to the world of plurality even here—

it may be said in the sense mentioned above (p. 53)—an existence of second

order. Would it then have been said of the Ātman otherwise in the same verses

just two lines before:

"On whom the five peoples

And ether are established"—?

But in the verses mentioned above, there is clearly a talk about the Brahman

and how it rules in its own world and whither an exit for the redeemed is

opened. But one is warned against perceiving plurality there.

I think, it is also clear that accepting reality of the world is completely

consistent with the other passages which are quoted as evidences for the

unique reality of the One. It may even be said that it is demanded by these

passages. We came across a comparison above (p. 50 f.): just as the sparks

coming out the fire, all creatures came out of the Ātman. In another passage:65

"As all spokes are fortified in the axle and in the felly of the wheel, all beings,

all gods, all worlds, all breath-powers, all these Selves (Ātman) are fortified

in this Ātman." Are these examples evidences for the unique reality of the

Ātman, as has been strangely maintained? Do they not rather confirm the

reality of the world of plurality?66 Are the flying sparks not as real as the fire?

The spokes not as real as the axle and the felly of the wheel? The one to whom

an emergence of plurality from the One, the fortification of a plurality at the

critical and the central point offered by the One would have appeared as a

mirage of Māyā: would he have not spoken in a different language? "Verily

it is the Ātman", says Yājñavalkya in that dialogue mentioned above, "that

should be seen, hearkened to, thought of, pondered on, O Maitreyī. With the

seeing of, hearkening to, with the thinking of, with the understanding of this

Ātman, this world-all is known." Does it imply a denial of the world? Is it

also not correct, when the world is also seen, as in Spinoza's doctrine of the

modi of god (comp. above p. 53) as a plurality which comprises the conditions

of the Ātman? Or likewise, in accordance with the prominent concept of the

Upaniṣads, when Ātman is considered as inherent in the plurality created by

it and animating it? The knowledge of this Ātman who alone is living, creative

and precious in the world could appear to the thinkers of the Upaniṣads to

be the same as the knowledge of the world: to take an exception to that would

mean ascribing to these a capacity of clinging to subtilities and a tendency of

clinging to purely theoretical subtilities. And this was in fact quite unknown

to them. Would not rather that equation of the knowledge of the Ātman with

that of the world be misleading in the mouth of a thinker who rejected the

existence of the world?

It cannot, of course, be positively proved that the thought of the illusion

of Māyā had never come to the mind of the thinkers of Upaniṣads in the

enormous mass of their obscure and ambiguous expressions, in the mysterious

language of their verses which often love more to conceal than to reveal the

mystic secrets. In fact, they had reached the regions of thinking from where

the path of rejecting the world was not any more far. Courage of venturing

into even the extreme was not missing. How early a pioneer must have tried

there at first his strength in that last step? We should possess a more certain

rhetorical tradition to be quite assured of that.

If however, precipitous ideas should have really anticipated the disintegra-

tion of the world in the illusion of Māyā, then the spheres of ideas of the

Upaniṣads would have retained a different look from the one they show in an

ingenious description of a more recent researcher,67 made by him with a strong

personal conviction. According to him, these texts emphasise an illusory cha-

racter of empirical reality; older they are, the more brusque and emphatic

the illusory character. And when this reality is acknowledged, or appears to

be so, then it is said to be based upon the adaptations to what has come down

from the past and upon man's own natural conception of the world, as this is

represented to the consciousness in its spatial, temporal and causal order with

a might that can never be completely vanquished.

We tried to show in our discussion so far how little that emphasis of illu-

sory character of the world, especially explicitly ascribed to the older Upani-

ṣads concurs with the contents of the texts. It may also be added that the inner

probability points to another direction. Besides, in that direction which is

recommended by the examination of the source-texts. The Upaniṣads succeed

the Brāhmaṇas, indeed in perfect continuity, in terms of literary history and

development of ideas. The Brahman-Ātman of the Upaniṣads emerges from

the Brahman-Ātman of the Brāhmaṇas. That potentiality lived in the things

like these potentialities also lived in them: elevated with more powerful abso-

luteness to the highest sovereignty. The concept of efficacy of inherent subs-

tances or powers, particularly of the efficacy of the Self in all expressions of

life of a person predominates the speculation of the Brāhmaṇas and continues

quite similarly in the ideas of the Upaniṣads concerning the Ātman: always

the rule of a power in an entity ruled by it and where the uncertainty concer-

ning the real existence of the latter is not mentioned. And therefore, the specu-

lation of the Upaniṣads in a realistic conception shown above appears to be

firmly associated with the mode of thinking of the preceding age, and so to

say, anchored in it. If the original, pure doctrine of the Upaniṣads had been

the doctrine of Māyā, then we would have to force, in the midst between both

the phases of thinking just mentioned, a divergence to an extreme idealism

of this doctrine. We may further have to adjust ourselves to an alien thought

emerging from this divergence, where in fact a simple, straightforward deve-

lopment from a preceding stage is evident. The non-reality of the world as

the oldest and purest Upaniṣadic doctrine stands, I feel, at par with that pri-

mordial monotheism which many historians of religion preferred to shift to

the beginnings of the things. Here the philosophical bias spoilt the judgment,

as the religious bias did there.

THE ABSOLUTE IN ITSELF. PERSONALITY OR IMPERSONALITY

The Absolute Not Merging with the World

Will the Supreme Being be consumed completely in animating and guiding

things?

It was customary long ago to place powers at the peak of the life in the

world. They reached beyond the world and were at home outside this world.

This held good also for the old gods in primitive form. When god Indra was

going around among human beings, a Vedic poet said to him, "You drank

Soma. Now go home, Indra. You have a beautiful wife, a splendid possession

in your home." Prajāpati who then took up the role of the creator was alone

before he created the world. The Puruṣa of the Ṛgvedic hymn (X, 90) who

became world did not enter it with his full force. A part of his, indeed a

greater part, led its own existence:

"So mighty is his greatness, indeed greater than this is Puruṣa:

All creatures are only a part of him, three-fourths enternal life

in heaven."

But it does not mean that the Upaniṣadic speculation had to look at this

existence in the same manner. Starting from the consideration of the world,

it could be satisfied in conceiving the highest power as working in it. But it

was natural that this established concept was transferred, by dealing with it

more extensively, to a new sphere of thought. It would have had been strange

if the Absolute had been granted just as much scope that was necessary for

its functions within the world. Otherworldly solitude was proper for it since

it was fundamentally different from all life in the world so that it shone there

in its own, full and pure aura like the Platonic ideas. There was besides one

more motive. It gave the thinking this direction. The desire to run away from

an existence ruled by death pointed to the otherworld which was free from

death: why should not the idea of the highest sat, which was no doubt

essentially formed under the influence of such desire, assume the form which

satisfied it fully and distinctly? Thus it was obvious, and what was discussed

in many passages earlier points out to it, that also Brahman-Ātman, in creat-

ing the world and entering it, was portrayed as reaching beyond the world

like those of its mystic predecessors. Brahman had its own existence from its

birth, ruling over the things, but not exhausting itself in them from among

these two entities which gave name to the Highest. One would rather find in

the original nature of the Ātman—yet also here not with a compelling neces-

sity—a restriction with reference to the sphere of existence of the entity

whose Ātman it is. But it can be understood that the Ātman merging with the

Brahman in the form of the Absolute did not keep to such restriction.

Now as it can be understood, the thought of the Absolute existing in the

things and in itself becomes blurred in the texts. But it is quite clear that the

differentiation, however, of the situations was not beyond one's mental

horizon.

The cosmogony mentioned above (p. 47) began with the presumption that

Brahman was alone in the beginning. When it created the world, "it went on

its own to the otherworldly sphere". That it descended from there again into

this world with its "both great manifestations", form and name, to form

what was not formed hardly implied that it would have renounced its own

existence in that "otherworldly sphere" for its own sake. The verse on the

swan quoted above (p. 47) is also to be understood in this sense. If it were to

pull out one of its legs from water, it would cause destruction of the world:

it may be added that it had not immersed the other leg in water—the deity

remains away from the world with one part of its whole being. What one of

the oldest Upaniṣads says could possibly be relevant here:68 "There are in-

deed two forms of Brahman: the formed and the formless; the mortal and

the immortal; the stationary and the moving, sat and the tyam69 (the

actual and the yon)." It is true that the formless, the immortal, etc., is inter-

preted as wind and air-space, and the formed as everything else by a strange

triviality of thought. One might say—if that also is not obviously to be

proved—that a mistaken explanation was subsequently forcibly given. But

originally it was aimed at the juxtaposition of the realisation of the Absolute

in the world and its abidance in its solitude. That a later Upaniṣad explicitly

interprets a completely similar juxtaposition of the two forms of existence

of the Supreme Being just in this sense speaks for it: "He (Ātman) desired:

'Would that I were many! Let me procreate myself. He performed austerity.

Having performed austerity, he created all this, whatever there is here. Having

created it, he entered it, having entered it, he became the actual and the yon,70

both the defined and the undefined, he became a dwelling place, knowledge and

ignorance, real and false."71 While, thus the Supreme Being abides in its "formed" condition in the world, which it has

entered, it stays outside this72 in a "formless" condition of existence. The

Brahman is a world-soul, but it is not only a world-soul. This is a decisively

significant idea. When god Indra returns to his heavenly abode from the earth,

there wasn't much of the concept of the otherworldliness. It is different when

an entity like Brahman reaches beyond the world. There open up prospects

for an existence, for a goal which is fundamentally different, of greater

importance and greater than this world. Function of the Highest in this world

appears to be unimportant. World and Brahman take their place in the highest

context of all existence only then rightly when there appears beyond the world

the all-surpassing and immense mystery of the supermundane Brahman which

is interwoven by the Brahman. Nay, there scarcely appears. And if, one were

to add perhaps, when the thinker also succeeds in this latest: in compre-

hending the unity in which both the forms of Brahman are connected with

each other. Does not the following reference point to such a thought?" Verily

the name of this Brahman is satyam [the Real]. These are the three syllables:

sa-ti-yam. sat [that which is] is the immortal, the ti is the mortal. It holds

the two together with yam (yam-, vacchati). It is called yam, for one holds

the two together with it."

The connection between the world and the supermundane side of the

Brahman is seen at first when the origin of the world is considered. The

Brahman releases the world from the unfathomable depth of its own essence

-a whole from a whole, it is said once, where the whole remains whole. It is

the "otherworldly sphere" of its solitude, from which the Imperishable goes

into the world. But then that connection emerges, as was already mentioned,

between this world and the otherworld, engaging the thinking much more

seriously. It decides about the last hopes of the thinker, in contemplating

about the Perfect One going away into the other worldly empire. But this

could be discussed later.

Uncertainty About the Alternatives Between Personality and Impersonality

One more question is to be asked here. This can be considered now on the

basis of the trends of thoughts we discussed above.

Is the Supreme One described personally or impersonally?

We are now introducing an alternative on our part for the views of the

ancients; it would be difficult to express it in the language of the Upaniṣads.

It was remarked above that the sacrificial theology of the Brāhmaṇas let the

delineating line between the personal and the impersonal existence become

hazy in their consideration of powers in whose action and movement the way

of the world was rooted. So also, at a much later stage, i.e., in the Buddhistic

period, Māra, the Wicked, is sometimes a Satanic personality, and sometimes

his form becomes bigger to assume in himself all the expanses of the world

ruled by suffering.73 The poetry of the Bhagvadgitā lets here all the time the

godly manifestation grow into a personal phenomenon of Kṛṣṇa and lets

there Kṛṣṇa dwindle into a neutral Supreme Being. Therefore, it is not sur-

prising that not much is found which is based on firm lines in the Upaniṣads in

their treatment of the problem we mentioned above. We have to gather the

fragments together and match the lines to one another. Of these, many can

stand out only quite indistinctly, and some of them run contrary to one

another.

61

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

Impersonal Features

It is Brahman, as it can be understood from the neuter word, which gets

the characteristic of an impersonal substance, and not of a personality among

the two entities which gave a name to the Supreme Being of the Upaniṣads.

So also one speaks of the neuter word "sat" ("that which is"), and it is said,

"That (tat) you are." Brahman, in contrast to its predecessor Prajāpati, has

grown to the highest dignity, not from the sphere of the old gods, but from

the world-filling potentialities. Ātman having a personal feature is the second

of both the entities. It could be said that it is not a person, it is in fact a

principle of personality. Puruṣa ("man") is more similar to a person: a term

which appears here and there as an approximate equivalent of the Ātman. We

shall speak of Puruṣa in a greater detail later when the great role assigned to

him will occupy our mind. Ātman, however, the unifying power of personal

life, has to stride—at least as far as the full consequence of the thought

determines—in the realm of plurality so that it can manifest itself in what

we call personality. So long as it abides as the One in the solitude of its

empire, this seer does not see, the knower does not know; the subject misses

the object. Seeing and knowing can become real only by facing the object.74

It is remarkable how one gets entangled here in a peculiar consequence.

Seeing and knowing is not ignored; it is in fact so much highly valued that the

Absolute Being has to become a seer, become "nothing else than

knowing."75 And yet where this seer, this knower, abides in his highest glory

and perfection, there is no space for seeing and knowing. Highest joy is

attributed to such an impersonal condition of a knower who does not know;

and thus that doctrine76 removing the incongruence just characterised

appears to become imminent: one goes beyond in letting the "Supreme Being"

as "nothing else than knowing"; the Ātman "consisting of bliss" appears as

the last, the profound behind the "Ātman consisting of knowledge".

There is no doubt that there prevails in all this a trend pointing towards

the impersonal. A man of volition, of action will present the world-ruler as

the one who has the highest volition and who acts. But as we have already

seen, the ancestor of the thinker of the Upaniṣads who wants to understand

the course of the world in his own way and influence it, is inclined to entrust

the reign to impersonal powers from the ancient times. And the contempla-

tive, the mystic is inclined towards that direction. He abandons himself to

the waves of the vast, fleeting visions. "Fire", says one of such modern Indian

mystics when he thinks of the relationship between the god and the world,

"does not have a definite form, but it assumes form in glowing embers." The

real beholder of the Upaniṣads does not see the embers; he sees the fire—

the formless god. Or rather he does not see the god as the one who sees what

is seen by standing face to face with it. But he merges with Him. It is not a

wakeful seeing, a dreamless sleep, so highly praised in the Upaniṣads that

solves the riddle and elevates the ego to the otherworldly heights of the seer,

who does not see.

62

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

33

Personal Features

It can be understood now that the ancient thinkers made often a halt deep below these heights and they were very much happy with the concrete ideas of this world. We have already pointed out above (p. 49) to the contrast that a complete personal figure of the Supreme Being is juxtaposed with the formless idea in the history of creation. There the Ātman thinks, it has desires and it is frightened. It was indeed difficult to find a way into the life in the world other than this or a similar way from the vain silence of the super-mundane, the impersonal, or if one likes, of a more-than-personal existence. More marked is the enthusiasm of fantasy for the personal in an illustration of one Upaniṣad.77 It sketches how the one who is released proceeds beyond the Brahman. It may, however, be noted that this Upaniṣad is not one of the oldest. And precisely in this Upaniṣad, the Brahman, named at first with a neuter name, receives the knower in the highest empire. At the same time, it immediately slips into a form of the masculine Brahman and puts on the whole garb of a personal god. And Yājñavalkya excluded in his famous discourse the conscious existence of the subject from the objectless oneness of this highest empire. Of course this god Brahman is not like the gods of the old Vedic faith. He assumed, in accordance with the style of the concept of this age, a more prudish, a more Sultan-like appearance. We shall come across further below78 a description, how he rules in the pomp of his palace commanding over hundreds of heavenly nymphs as his maid-servants. The knower says to him there, “You are the Self (Ātman) of every being. What you are, I am.” The god asks, “What am I then?” And the answer is: “The Real ... you are this All ...” This is nothing else but the confused leaps of fantasy inbetween the reminiscences of impersonal abstractions and the liking for colourful images of a baroque personal life.

And thus, when one speaks of the Supreme Being, the features of the one or the other type go on changing. The sat (that which is) reposes in all things like the salt in salt-water. It is that subtle which protects an innocent person from the firebrand at the time of divine judgment. It is what one feels as heat in the body, what one hears as humming when one closes one’s ears. But then we have the other picture. The Ātman lives a personal life not only by entering the individual human or humanlike existence in the midst of the world of plurality, but it also functions effectively as a ruler over the whole world-movement. And it is really difficult to imagine it to be anything else but the personal. Yājñavalkya speaks at first as if he is speaking of something impersonal, when he calls Brahman imperishable, neither course nor fine, without inside and without outside.79 But are then not rights of sovereignty attributed to this being which appears to be inactive, when it is further said that at its command the heaven and earth stand apart, at its command the rivers from the snowy mountains flow downwards? When in another passage, the Ātman is called the “ruler over all, supreme Lord over all”? Or when it is said in a later Upaniṣad

that it is “the protector of the world” that it lets the human beings do good or evil actions, depending upon whether it will lead them upwards or downwards? Is it asserting too much when it is said that the vacillating figure of the Supreme Being reveals complete features of a personal god? It is true, it can be always felt that a full force has not been applied here to shape the personality in a great style. But how different is this god from the god of the Old Testament! He does not guide the people and their destiny towards a great purpose with his excessive power: but where did one feel the flight of history on the soil from which the Upaniṣads sprouted? This divine personality is not accessible to a personal proximity, to a communication in prayer in exchange of love between man and god. And it is also not what the thinkers are asking for. A message of godliness of their own self offers them an abundant compensation for every other desire!

METEMPSYCHOSIS. KARMAN

Different Forms of the Doctrine of Metempsychosis

It was depicted above (p. 15 ff.) how there was a transition in the early Brāhmaṇa-texts from the belief in the otherworld in the most ancient India to the doctrine of metempsychosis in its beginnings. This development progressed considerably in the period with which we are concerned here. Yet at times it is doubtful in individual cases how much of the apparent changes is based only on the fact that the texts now speak more often and more in detail about these spheres of concepts.

There is no better soil than India for these fantasies. They allow the existence to pass over into another existence in such an easy flow that every existence becomes a passing wave in the ocean of infinite life.

Even now, the doctrine of metempsychosis has not been fully developed. Changes which so profoundly affect the fundaments of a faith and whose consequences reach far beyond in all directions, could not attain their final goal within brief periods of time. Also the contemplative intellect took naturally various points of view with respect to the flocking masses of images in which the wandering of souls through the otherworlds was portrayed. It was at many places not so sure and applied lesser energy of conceptualization than it showed with respect to the unity of imperishable existence.

Often, considerable remnants of ancient folk-belief are seen, like in the preceding age, where the Upaniṣads speak of metempsychosis. Beginnings of new thoughts, floods of ideas and fantasies surge through the wide spaces in their conception of the world, and they are ready to accept all this. It is a conglomerate which attains only very gradually a comparatively fixed form.

Now the soul of the deceased is understood as entering directly a new existence like a caterpillar, when it has come to the end of a blade of grass, shrinking into itself and entering a new path or “like a weaver taking the material from an artificial fabric another newer and more beautiful texture:

so the Ātman strikes down this body and lets it sink into unconsciousness

and makes for himself another newer and more beautiful form like that of

the fathers or of the Gandharvas (heavenly demi-gods) or of the gods, or of

Prajāpati, or of Brahman80 or of other beings.'81

Elsewhere—quite deviating from the predominant concepts in the other

texts—the mortal creatures are allowed to enter the Supreme Being and

emerge again from it in a new existence.82 Or the soul, before it returns to

this world, must first travel through distant regions. The 'gods' path'83

leads to luminous heights from where there is no return: we shall talk about

this path later. The soul goes, on the other hand, through smoke and night on

the "fathers' path"; it reaches into the periods of waning moon and into the

periods when, days which are dedicated to the dead, start becoming smaller.

From ages the fantasy had no difficulty in visualising concepts like those of

reaching the year or other entities. Even the "world of the fathers" is not left

unaffected by these wanderings of the soul. The places, in accordance with

the ancient belief, chosen by the deceased fathers for eternal or indefinite

future, have been arranged now as the only station on their travel route.

The journey goes further to the moon. The moon is particularly popular in

these plays of fancy. It appears that the ancient folk-belief had made her the

dwelling place for the deceased. Further, finishing off of a drink by gods or

by gods and manes and new filling up of a heavenly drink was seen in her

waning and waxing. All this is confused in a mess, and it is said now that the

souls "on reaching the moon become food. They enjoy there, as one enjoys

the Soma—'Increase! Decrease!'—thus the gods enjoy them there. When

that passes away for them, then they pass forth into this ether; from ether,

into wind; from wind, into rain; from rain, into the earth. On reaching the

earth they become food. Again they are offered in the fire of man. Thence

they are born in the fire of woman.84 Rising up into the world, they begin

the same cycle again."

And yet a progress emerging from all this vacillation and from this

mingling of the old and the new is clearly perceptible. Certain elements of the

whole sphere of concepts are explained in this progress, and they become

stronger.

First it applies to the belief in the return of the departed to an existence

on the earth. This thought of the return to a earthly existence, in contrast to

the dominance of the concept of "re-death" which threatened the one in the

otherworld, was suggested faintly in isolated cases in the Brāhmaṇa-period;

this has now been clearly emphasised. Of course, the thinkers were still not

anywhere near the plays of fancy pursued later by Buddhism in tracing back

the chain of existence through those unforeseeable multitudes of earlier

existences, as they are described in the "Jātakas".85 It appears that the

thinkers of the Upaniṣads were more busy with the thoughts about the future

forms of existence rather than with the wanderings of the past.86 But the

path of thoughts leading straight to those concepts has once been trodden

upon, and one can't but go further and further forward on it.

The Karman. Moral Retribution

The second element of belief in metempsychosis, which has also not been

formed anew, but further developed and strengthened, is the doctrine of

retribution of the good and the bad works as a power which specifies to the

wandering soul a path through high and low (superior and inferior)

existence.

" 'Yājñavalkya', asks one of the competitors in discussion the wise man:87

'When the voice of a dead man goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eye

into the sun, his mind into the moon, his eyes into the regions of the sky, his

body into the earth, his Ātman88 into the ether, the hairs of his body into

the plants, the hairs of his head into the trees, and his blood and semen are

poured into water, what then becomes of the man himself?' 'Friend Ārta-

bhága, give me your hand. We two only will know this; it is not for others.'

Then the two went out and talked with each other. And what they talked: they

talked of action (or of work: karman). And what they praised: they praised

the work. Indeed, man becomes good by good work and bad by bad work.'89

The way in which the concept of "Karman" is introduced here, i.e., in an

exceptionally solemn form, is as if the author of the dialogue was conscious

of the unforeseeable influence of the thought he was expressing. It is true

that it is not in the same tone of that utterance of Yājñavalkya which would

make us presume that this mystery which is accessible only to a chosen few

is something that is newly discovered. Such a claim for the doctrine of

Karman would mean going too far apart from the fact that the awareness

of the progress of human knowledge by revelation of new insights bestowed

upon these thinkers appears to be strange for this age. But in any case, a

historical observer may be allowed to modify this claim: that in the period of

that dialogue, the concept of the power of actions determining the existence

beyond death has been understood as fundamental in the consciousness of

those at first who belonged to closer circles, that one had made a considerable

progress to explain and work out this doctrine at that time. All this is

suggested by the new catchword Karman coming into fashion.

There is one passage90 which ends up in the doctrine of Karman. It names

desire, instead of Karman, as a deciding factor: but both mean the same

thing. "Now it is said, 'Man is made of desire (kāmā)'. As his desire, such is

his resolve. As is his resolve, such is his action. And what action he performs,

he reaches that existence."

Another old evidence of the doctrine of Karman is connected with the

explanation given above (p. 58) about the return of the souls to the earth with

the rain and about the metamorphosis in which they go through plants, throu-

gh man's and woman's body. What is the cause that some souls come into the

path desired by them and the others in an unfavourable path? The text says,

"Those whose conduct has been pleasant here, they will enter a pleasant

womb: either the womb of a Brahmana or the womb of a Kṣatriya or the

womb of a Vaiśya. But those whose conduct has been evil here, they will enter

66

an evil womb; either the womb of a dog or the womb of a swine, or the womb

of a Cāndāla.'91 Thus, these wanderings of creatures reach also through the

animal empire, or at least, through the part of the animal empire: for these

most inferior animals go neither on the gods' path nor on the fathers' path

(p. 64). "It means for these creatures which return again and again: be born

and die." A verse coming after this is quite different from the preceding:

gold-thief, the one who drinks alcohol, one who dishonours his teacher's

bed and the one who kills a Brahman, these four and the fifth, who goes

with them, "fall", i.e., they come in the hell. It is remarkable, how here, the

ancient, sustained belief in retribution by punishments of hell and the later

concepts of the influence of Karman run into one another. It remained the

task for the later period to unite the both as far as it was possible. The passage

discussed here shows vividly how for the time being the one suddenly stands

next to the other.

There is one more evidence which gives important information about the

Karman doctrine of this age. The passage (above p. 64) describing how a soul

goes over into the world of manes, Gandharvas and gods like a caterpillar

creeping from one blade of grass to another adds a verse:

"When it comes to the end of an action it has performed here,

It returns from that world again into this world for a new action."

The size of the reward has somehow to correspond to the merit. It was

perhaps rather too early when those petty examples of calculation were put

up to show how according to a pedantic tariff, a virtuous or a vicious action

reverts to the doer. Such a tariff liked to work with the effect of strong exagge-

rations and multiplications: it comprised certain legal restrictions for the one

who was enjoying or suffering. When an existence containing a reward or a

punishment had lasted out the corresponding period, it meant, so to say, that

the Karman was used up, and it was necessary to acquire a new Karman.92

How could even the movement of the wandering souls be sustained, if a fresh

impetus were not to be given again and again? And a distinction is made in

this, as in the verse just quoted, between such forms of existence in which the

Karman is produced and those in which it is exhausted.

A question may arise here whether a being entering an existence to produce

a new Karman makes completely a new start, whether it is free in its action, or

whether a compulsion remaining from the past forces it to follow a definite

path for the future and no other determined by its Karman. This is so because

the subject—say, till it gets deliverance—remains uninterrupted in the path

of the inevitable necessity.93 It appears, however, that the thinking of the

antiquity had not focused its attention on this problem.

These are the beginnings of the doctrine of Karman, and this doctrine

remained as a main factor in all the periods of the Indian idealogy. An old

Buddhist regards it as his possession and his heritage, the womb from which

he is born, the race to which he is related. Man cannot escape the might of

Karman, says a Buddhistic verse, neither in the atmosphere, nor in the midst

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

67

of an ocean, nor when one forces one's way into the caves of a mountain.

And in a later period a Kashmirean historian points out to the mystery of

Karman after being convinced of the fact that he cannot explain the course of

things through visible causes.

"What dream and juggler's art could never shape,

Miracle of mysterious happening flashes forth

From the colourful depth of the past action."

The doctrine of Karman, as we find it in the Upaniṣads, is completely

dominated there as also in the Brāhmaṇas by a strong tendency which assigns

the course of events not to divine power, mercy and arbitrary action, but to

impersonal orders.94 An intellect desires to understand the rules of the fixed

laws. Thus the Karman functions by virtue of a sort of a mechanical necessity.

Action produces directly its consequences without any interference of a rewar-

ding or a punishing god. The ideas how it is carried out are basically quite

on the niveau of the belief in magic which was very much alive in this age. The

imagination roving unhindered through all expanses of reality and unreality

had allied itself with this belief. But the decision, what should be the conse-

quences of every action, devolves on the moral need of justice. Pursuing an

obvious course of development, the priestly-ritualistic trend of the Brāhmaṇa-

theology, which granted its promises especially to the performance and know-

ledge of the sacrificer has been noticeably weakened in favour of farther and

freer manner of looking at things giving primacy to the moral. Of course, the

old habit and the atmosphere of caste asserts itself even now in the occasional

re-emergence of that priestly trend of thoughts. But on the whole, it is no more

the main thing for human life that he-goats and intoxicating drink are pro-

perly prepared for the god and the priests richly honoured. But correct, pure

action lays its claim on retribution: one desires to see it guaranteed in other

existences, since it often fails to appear in this life.

As in the morally-magical mechanism imagined as controlling the fates of

creatures, so also, the personal factor recedes conspicuously into the back-

ground in creatures ruled by it. The personality enters new forms of persona-

lities smoothly and unresisted in accordance with the Karman; it also moves

through the conditions of de-personalisation, consumed by gods, becoming

rain or plant-food. As in economic transactions, values of all types strip them-

selves of their peculiarities and are translated into mere monetary value, we

are not far from that here that the living value of personality is translated into

a sort of moral monetary value, a sum of favourable and unfavourable Kar-

man: where we are not far from the consequence, in fact we are actually at it,95

that this monetary value can be transferred from the one to the other.

As far as the meagre evidence permits a judgment, what is altogether

strange to the Upaniṣadic doctrine of Karman is this: Its main feature letting

the wanderings of souls controlled by the Karman appear as a sort of a mea-

ningful totality and as a purifying process striving gradually for the highest

goal. The grandiose concepts of the Buddhists of their master advancing to

attain Buddhahood through countless aeons may be remembered or the word

of the Bhagvadgitā about a yogin:

"Maturing in multiple births, he goes ultimately on the highest path."

These are the products of a profound and a thorough execution of the

belief in metempsychosis and in Karman. It can be understood from them

that they are still far from its initial stages.

One hardly knew to connect the doctrine of Karman more strongly with

the idea of Brahman which was the focal point of the Upaniṣadic speculation.

The power of Karman does not reach where the Brahman rules alone in its

glory-we have to come back to it later—. But it is said that the Brahman

should also guide all happenings in the world: days and years come and go

by its order, the rivers flow down from the snowy mountains. Thus it appears

that the law of Karman is, above all, to be derived from the Brahman. It had

to be a manifestation of its world-pervading power. It does not appear that

the ancient thinkers approached this problem seriously in this sense:96 a

shortcoming which is, of course, nothing else but a consequence of that funda-

mental, unavoidable weakness of the Brahman-doctrine: of its futility to find

in the perfection of the imperishable One a starting point from which there is

a path which leads to the restlessness of the world of plurality. The more deci-

sively the Karman controls the course of events, more so less one needs the

Brahman for that; thus a germ of later development is seen here: the Absolute,

devoid of all power of action, away from the world-activity and the effect

of the regulations ruling it, has taken up the dumb role of a mere spectator.

The doctrine of Karman is on a broad path of the development of human

thought. Even the Greek speculation has touched it, it is true, it only touched

it. Not so much this doctrine, but the dominant power to which it rose is

characteristic for India. It stirred the imagination, made the timid souls

anxious, burdened the life with constraints through its dark super-power with

the consequences of the unfathomable sin. The effects of the doctrine of

Karman can be compared with those of the caste. It was the destiny of this

meek people's spirit to get entrapped in bondage through the ideas it thought

and through the institutions it created.

Merit of Existence

The World Judged as Pervaded by Brahman

The thinking which was now becoming mature sketched the world in more

coherent and larger lines. And, therefore, the merit of existence as a whole

had also to be considered more seriously and expressed in more definite terms.

What was accomplished was that the world-filling plurality was attributed

to the unity of Brahman-Ātman. Obviously, this not only influenced that

evaluation most strongly, but even perhaps determined it. But there were two

paths open for that. It could be emphasised that the world is pervaded by

Brahman: then the world had to share the highest values inherent in the

Brahman. Or it was emphasised that plurality, although emanating from the

One, signifies, however, as always, a fall-out of the unity, an antithesis to it.

Then it could be hardly avoided that this antithesis was also expressed in a

negative evaluation of the life in the world.

The World Judged as Different from Brahman. Pessimism

Efforts to give the first of the solutions to this problem are not altogether

missing. Thus it was taught that something of the highest bliss inherent in

Brahman is imparted to the world and that the other beings "live from a

corpuscule of this bliss" (p. 45). And the intensity of bliss prevalent here and

there is calculated in terms of numbers in a pedantic manner. This repeatedly

paralyses the lofty strain of thoughts in the Upaniṣads. The highest bliss in

the world of human beings belongs to the one "who is successful and fortunate

among men, lord over others, best provided with all human enjoyments".

One unit of bliss in the world of the fathers (manes) is formed by hundredfold

of this human bliss: and thus a series grows higher and higher in hundredfolds

till one reaches with the sixth step, beyond the bliss of Prajāpati's world, the

bliss of the world of Brahman.97 Thus there is no antithesis between the

merit of existence of human life and the Brahman-world, only a gradation,

strong enough, but all the same moderate with respect to the extravagant

numbers in which the later ages used to express the contrast between the

everyday existence and the higher orders.

Such conceptions, however, fall back far behind the other, pessimistic

solution to the great problem of the world. A strongly prevalent current, if

not of a popular, yet of a philosophical view of life in India takes the second

of the ways mentioned above from the ancient natural assessment of human

happiness and suffering. This ended on the whole in the prayer of the Vedic

singers for a long life of hundred autumns. It moved to the point upon which

the Buddhism stood later: the doctrine which places the tenet of suffering of

all existence on the apex of its article of faith and speaks to the man in search

of happiness:

"Would you like to laugh, cherish desire, when for ever the

flames are ablaze?

You are enveloped in darkness. Would you not like to long

for light?"

The Upaniṣads have not reached yet this passionate rejection of the world

and life. But they are already on this path.

Death and the Other Evils

We can scarcely know the factors moving decisively on to this path. I

70

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

think, the texts support the supposition that the thought of death may have

exerted a considerable influence upon it.

While Death was hardly in visible distance for the one living happily in

the hymns of the Ṛgveda, it has moved, as we have seen, much closer in the

Brāhmaṇa-period. Its power has tremendously increased in the belief in

re-death (p. 16). It may be said that the thought of unperishable perishableness

is more and more emphasised as the doctrine of metempsychosis progressed

further. It is known how these worrries depressed and tortured the souls later

in the old Buddhistic period. All world-pleasures, and generally the life on

earth was embodied in “Māra the evil” for the Buddhists. But Māra means

“death”. When Buddha gave the sermon for the first time said to have been

delivered to win him his first disciples, these are the first spoken words: “Open

your ears, O monks. Immortality98 is found.” Then it is reported of both the

youths who became the first of the believers, before they had met Buddha,

“they had agreed: one who first finds immortality should inform the other.”

Just as the question of death and immortality emerges as decisive here in the

most important passages of the sacred history of Buddhism, so also we find

it in the Upaniṣads in the wonderful conversation99, that too repeated twice,

of a sage with his wife who was educated in the sacred knowledge.100 He was

about to leave his house to live as a hermit. “ ‘Maitreyī’ said Yājñavalkya,

‘I am leaving now. Behold. I want to make settlement between you and

Kātyāyanī.’ 101 Then Maitreyī said, ‘If now, my Lord, this whole earth filled

with all its wealth were mine, would I be immortal thereby?’ ‘No’, answered

Yājñavalkya, ‘your life would be like that of the rich; but there is no hope of

immortality through wealth’. Then Maitreyī said, ‘What should I do with that

through which I may not be immortal? Tell me, my Lord, what you know.’ ”

And Yājñavalkya talks to her about Ātman: one can enter his All-Unity

beyond the world of consciousness which comprises the duality of the seer

and the seen, of the knower and the known: “that is the meaning of immorta-

lity”.

Thus, on the one hand the urgent desire of the soul frightened by death,

and on the other hand, the highest idea, are juxtaposed as question and

answer, and the thinking is elevated to some extent to this idea. Perhaps the

idea of death gets an exaggerated significance by this juxtaposition, and it is

felt more so intensively as the suffering of all suffering, because death is the

suffering. And there is help for this suffering only in the highest height. Now

mainly the expression “the evil, the death”102 is repeated again and again. This

was coined by an earlier period. Man prays,103 “From asat lead me to

sat. From darkness lead me to light. From death lead me to immortality.”—

And it is explained: the asat, the darkness is death ; the sat, the light is immor-

tality. Thus the first two sentences in that prayer need and get an explanation:

the terms asat and darkness refer to the concept of death. But “when it is

said: from death lead me to immortality, there is nothing there that seems

obscure”.

After all that, I think, it is likely that it had been the thought of death

71

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

which turned the scales for the thinkers of the Upaniṣads, inclined as they

were to work with gross generalisations and uncouth contradictions. In their

evaluation of the world, they opted for the antithesis between the world and

the Ātman. They did not want the world to be pervaded by the Ātman. Thus

the motif of this antithesis extends its typical influences recurring repeatedly

in the history of human thinking. While all the predicates of light, splendour,

blissfulness are heaped upon the Ātman, there falls a quickly growing shadow

on everything that is not Ātman.

Indeed, it is something more than a shadow that comes from without. A

gloomy trend clings inseparably to the innermost essence of all this existence.

It is now not only said:104 “This world is completely overtaken by death,

completely in the power of death”, “this world is food for death”—where the

world and the death are opposed to one another as two entities—, but it is

said that the death, as the Buddhists said later, is the real essence of life in the

world: “this world is nothing but forms of death”.

And then all other evils were put on the side of death. The thinker speaks

of old age and death, or of old age, death, pain, hunger and thirst—famines

in India and the feeling of thirst one has in the blazing heat of the sun there

may be borne in mind. Or it is said: hunger and thirst, pain, illusion, old age

and death; and a verse contrasts the world of suffering with the Supreme

Being with the words:

“The seer sees not death

Nor sickness, nor any distress.

The seer sees only the All;

Obtains the All entirely.”

These are brief and simple compositions in which what one under-

stands as the suffering of existence is expressed. One had not yet begun, like

Buddhism later and one of the latest Upaniṣads, to expatiate on individual

situations of life in long effusions saturated with pathos and to emphasise the

strength of suffering in detailed descriptions. But when the Buddhism speaks

in a lapidary language of its credo of the “four sacred truths” and of the

suffering of existence, it is clearly imminent in the expressions of the Upaniṣad

we have just mentioned what the first of these four tenets says: “Birth is

suffering. Old age is suffering. Disease is suffering. Death is suffering. To be

united with what one does not love is suffering, to be separated from what one

loves is suffering and not achieving what one desires is suffering.””106

And even there the old Upaniṣads are ahead of Buddhism that they—natu-

rally only in brief words—begin to extend the negative evaluation of the

merits of existence also to what appears to one’s trivial consciousness as

happiness. And herein, the nervous imagination of these thinkers knows to

discover a feature of infirmity, void and death in everything that is not Ātman.

“Verily, O Gārgī, the one who brings libations and offerings and practises

austerity for thousand years in this world, but without knowing the Imperisha-

ble, limited indeed is it (the reward of his work)."108 "As here on earth, the

world which is won by work becomes destroyed, even so there, the world

which is won by merit becomes destroyed. Those who go hence without

having found the Ātman and those real desires, for them there is no freedom

in all worlds." Therefore, perishableness, unfreedom clings also to the exis-

tence to which good works lead. That is the case with all corporeal existence:

"This body, indeed, is mortal. It has been appropriated by death. It is the

abode of this immortal, bodiless Self (ātman). One who is corporeal is seized

by pleasure and suffering (literally : what one loves and what one loves not).

Indeed, there is no freedom from pleasure and pain for the one who is corpo-

real. But the one who is not corporeal, pleasure and pain do not touch him."

Does it not convey the idea here that like pain, pleasure also, which is in the

realm of corporeality, must be warded off and that it is unworthy of entering

the world of bodiless perfection? There is one more passage we have mention-

ed earlier in another context.107 It speaks more explicitly. Real pleasure is in

plenum alone: where one does not see and hear anything else. This plenum

is the immortal; small is the mortal. What one extols in this world : possession

of cows, horses, gold, women and fields: it is not plenum, "for one thing is

established there on the other thing". A passage repeated thrice in the dia-

logues of Yājñavalkya (Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad) judges in the most laconic

and spirited language: after the grandeur of the Supreme Being is described,

it is said, "What is different from it is sorrowful." And soon a later Upaniṣad

uses directly the word "world-sorrow" : Ātman is untouched by it like the

sun, the eye of the world, remains unaffected by diseases of the human eye.

Thus the world-sorrow must have begun—this is the consequence of the

total masses of concepts—when the Ātman decided to enter something that is

different from it, i.e., the world of corporeality, with its own essence. We shall

see that on the other hand the abolition of suffering is described in an emphatic

language as conditioned by the awakening of Ātman to the understanding of

its own self. This obviously requires that the origin of suffering is associated

with something like forgetting its own nature and its sublimity. That must

have happened to the Ātman when it entered the world of things. We come

across a story in the description of creation how the Supreme Being did not

feel well in its solitude and how it desired to be many, and hence created the

world (p. 43). Now we see that this process should have appeared logically as

an immense and serious metaphysical misfortune, to be more exact, as a

metaphysical sin. But we have to ascertain a remarkable fact that there are no

expressions like this used in the age about which we are talking here. Is it just

a coincidence? Or was it not ventured, at least at that time, to indict the

Supreme Being, which appears to us to be hardly avoidable, in spite of the

consequences?

An alien feature is introduced in this estrangement of the spirit from the

world. This becomes quite transparent everywhere in the trends of thoughts

observed by us, when one believes to have felt a sort of horror of the inexplica-

ble irrationality of destiny, that there is a world—this hard fact of existence—

which inexorably keeps itself aloof from every sensible evidence of its necessi-

ty.108 But in reality, it appears, the urge for knowledge of those ancients

hardly skirted the question at all, whether the thinking can master, in this

sense, the existence and how it will be tolerated if that does not succeed. Why

can it not be imagined that the Brahman does not exist? Or the world does not

exist? There is no trace of the first question. Hardly real traces of the second

also. For the ideas that the Supreme Being felt lonely and, therefore, created

the world, do not reveal indeed any awareness of the depth of the problem.

They resemble the convenient answers with which one puts off the prying

questions of children.

Thus the fact that the world exists does not give a shock which rattles the

last depths of life. What gives a shock is the fact that everything the world

comprises is perishable. It is subject to suffering and death. A mental discord,

seldom missing in the characteristics of higher religious life, emerges here

from this awareness. The uninterrupted unity of existence, in which one fought

so naturally once and assured oneself of the small battle against the individual

evil and for the individual good, is over. In other historical ambiences, in

realms of strong belief in god, one understands suffering by which one feels

oppressed, as a consequence of one's own ethical inadequacy with respect to

the demands of god, as wages of sin. But here, on the other hand, it appears

rather as a consequence of metaphysical inadequacy of life in the world with

respect to the otherworldly ideal. Thus the inner estrangement is not expres-

sed here as a contrition of a torn conscience, but as an urge of breaking away

from the dissatisfaction with the world, with the possessions to which once

the heart had clung with all its strands. There is only one possession, and it is

irreconcilably antagonised with those apparent possessions. This possession

is in the otherworld.

The Character of the Indian Pessimism

The manner in which this tremendous change has come about in the minds

of the Indian thinkers and the ascetics is extremely remarkable. The point at

which this change set in was reached rather early. The major part of the history

of Indian people, if at all one can speak of history there, is still in the future.

People lived in prosperity and well-being. They are not those tormented by

suffering who speak here of world-sorrow. They are the thinkers who are

adept in their imagination. A fatigue of the race originating from the north

appears, however, to be expressed in the direction which the thinkers adopt

and keep to. This fatigue has set in after the lively times of the Ṛgveda in the

land of the scorching sun—physical dispositions weakening the vital energy

and the joy de vivre, but promoting the anxious adherence of imagination to

every anxiety and gloomy thought. The call was: away from the frenzy and

the noise of active happening! Away to the secure harbour of eternal peace!

The external conditions create an atmosphere in which the thinking controlled

by such moods can follow unhampered its path till the last extremes and rip

off the whole inner existence without encountering any strong resistance of

other mental powers involved in real life and finding happiness there. The

idea of the otherworldly existence becomes extremely prominent in the world

of thoughts. An unconditional rejection of this world is in accordance with

the elevation of the existence to the highest blissful peaks. But it loses the

character of sorrowful resignation for the one who has penetrated this rejec-

tion successfully. For he does not feel that he is too weak and meek to open

an exit from the world-sorrow to the splendour of that supermundane world.

Deliverance

Relationship Between the Universal and the Individual Self

The cardinal point for the hope of deliverance—so much is clear from all

that—is in relationship between the ego and the Brahman and between the

ego and the All. It has to be considered now in more detail than before, how

this relationship was preceived.

It is only a tentative expression when the Self is once called “the trace of

all this (existence), for one knows all this (existence) through it.”109 It is not

inferior to the all-embracing, all-pervading Self. A word of Sāṇḍilya (p. 36

above) expresses what can be called the basic doctrine of the Upaniṣads: the

all-pervading Self. Greater than the heaven, is my Self. It is said in the Chānḍo-

gya Upaniṣad: “Verily, as large as this (world)-space, is, so large is this space

within the heart.

Both earth and heaven are contained within it,

God of both fire and wind, both sun and moon—

lightning and stars, what belongs to one here and what does not belong, all

that is contained within it.” Yājñavalkya says, “In the space within the heart,

there reposes the ruler of all, the lord of all, the king of all.” And the same

teacher gives twice the same answer to the question repeated twice about the

“manifest and not invisible Brahman, the Ātman who is within all”: “This is

your Ātman who is within all.” Tat tvam asi “That you are”, says a father to

his son. Certainly not a sober consideration that the Supreme Being is all,

and therefore, among others, has to be my and your ego. Rather a triumphant

conviction of mysticism to conceive the All, to be the All, in one’s ego.

Every extenuation of the equation of Tat and of tvam had to be, by cool

analysis, far from such bliss drawn from the plenty. Not a part of the fullness

of the very essence of Brahman, that would be separated from the other parts,

but it had to be the whole Brahman which shines towards the beholder from

the very bottom of the heart. Was there any doubt about that? But for that

the conceptions of the ancient belief in magic had too much pervaded one’s

mind. It was not difficult for the beings to be infinitely big, and at the same

time, to be infinitely small, to be this, and at the same time, to be that. And

therefore, the contradictions between the fullness of All of the universal and

the limitations of the personal Ātman could not be inconvenient. They were

very much there, and one could scarcely speak about these things without

somehow an offence being taken from them: only that the shock was not felt.

It was already said in that same address of Sāṇḍilya, as was seen by us before:

“This is my Self. I shall reach this Self departing from here” (p. 36)—as if the

Self, in order to reach itself, had to set out on travel and had to wait for the

future. If we also refer here to the pronouncement of an Upaniṣad not belon-

ging to the earliest ones, it will remind us of the description mentioned earlier

(p. 61 f.) and given in Kauṣitaki Upaniṣad on the way of the departed one to

the highest peak of the world of Brahman. There rules the Brahman—the

masculine personification of the neuter Brahman—; he asks the wandering

soul, “Who are you?” And it answers, “I am, what you are”: thus we have

at the same time, identity and juxtaposition of the questioner and the answerer,

of the one ruling on the peak and of the stranger from below.

Thus besides the absolute equation of the world-Ātman and the Ātman of

a man realised in the sphere of magical mysticism, a conception deviating

from this equation is in the offing. It appears that the Brahmanic thinkers were

not aware of it. Weakening of the belief in magic and growing need for more

vivid, more consistent systematisation of the conception of the world promo-

ted this development. One gets prepared to expect from the world-ego, some-

thing like the division of its self, branching off of a certain mass of its substance

here and there to animate the individuals here and there so that it becomes

many human egos.

The texts are full of several similes which lead, more or less decisively, to

such a concept.110 The creatures enter the sat like the essence of several trees

merging into honey. They are the rivers. Sat is the ocean (see p. 52 above).

Sat is inherent in them like salt in salt water: one can hardly miss the idea

that they are the particles of the whole mass of salt which make these and

those drops of water salty. The Ātman lets all the creatures emanate from itself

like the spider its thread, like the fire the sparks. Does it mean that the material

existence of creatures is doubtlessly manifold, but the unity Ātman animating

them all remains unimpaired? It may, however, be understood that also what

lives in many sparks of the soul as a firelike power, is all fire of the soul, and

in so far it is the same, but that here and there only parts of the one mighty

fire-substance are effective.111 The thought about the parts of Ātman appeared

obviously to the ancients, without much ado, as unacceptable.112 This is shown

by the passage (p. 53) speaking of Ātman in its relationship to the eye, ear,

etc. “It is divided113 by all these individually”: like the different functions

here, the differentiation of empirical subjects, in which the Ātman is inherent,

can also postulate a certain division.

If all these pronouncements should leave any doubt, Yājñavalkya’s com-

ment on death and deliverance is quite explicit in the following passage. It

is said at first that the Ātman (= Brahman) “consists of all desire, no desire,

anger and no anger, right or wrong” (p. 39). Then the text continues: “Now

when saṅg 'onsisting of this, consisting of that' : according as he acts and

according as he behaves. so does he become.114 The doer of good becomes

good. The doer of evil becomes evil." It appears, therefore, quite clear from

all this yatkāri contradictions-we may imagine and add, in a state of indiffe-

rence -sas united in the universal Ātman. One side of every contradiction

appears or prevails in an individual Ātman. And that is why there is a diffe-

rence in individual character, course of life and wanderings of the soul. It is

clear that this concept of the absolute equation of the universal and the indi-

vidual Ātman is irreconcilable. The latter has to be considered as the result

of the former. As its part which can be formed differently. Not like it in its

complete grandeur. It is well-known that the Sāṁkhya-system115 later deduces

the plurality of Ātman from the different distribution of birth and death

among the beings, from the dominance of Sattva here, Rajas there and Tamas

elsewhere.116 That has its beginning here. Of course, one was far from abso-

lutely separating the individual selfhoods and juxtaposing them with one

another, as it happens in the Sāṁkhya. But the two systems must have origina-

ted from a common source. They must have then distanced themselves for a

period and some distance on the way, each in its own direction.

Yet, it is all the same now, whether the same one Ātman is involved in

this sorrowful world by virtue of its mystical wonder, and abides at the same

time entirely and freely in its own realm, or whether it has rather dispatched

parts of its Self from its freedom into the world: in each case, the purpose of

doing away with suffering and death will mean as much as severing connec-

tion with the world.

What can cause this severing of connection?

From the times of the Brāhmaṇas, two powers, above all, come into

question. They are works, particularly ritualistic works on the one hand,

and then the knowledge on the other.

One may think of the magic power of austerity as the third power. The

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Deliverance Through Knowledge and Not Through Works

It is well-known that one tended to give preference to knowledge in the

rivalry between knowledge and works. This has been there since long, but

there were fluctuations. Now the time had obviously come to end these un-

certainties. After all, the Ātman-speculation pointed now to a new, incom-

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

77

parable goal beside the old goals of religious endeavours. A pathway to good

works should be and must be open to all. But to understand this new goal, on

the other hand, and strive for it was possible only for the unique knowledge

of the few, for the knowledge which was able to penetrate into the depths.

The lines of thoughts fitted themselves on their own to a clear figure. The

works found, in accordance with the order of the Karman-doctrine, their

reward or punishment in the joys and horrors on the path of metempsychosis.

This was understood by all and desired by the ignorants. But that mysterious

prize desired by all was reserved by the initiates only for themselves, with

yet another emphasis, with a deeper motivation than was presented in those

hundred promises of the Brāhmaṇa-texts for the one "who knows this". Who

could get an access to the Brahman with full right, but those who perfected

the art related to the Brahman, above all, the art of the knowledge of the

Ātman in its hiding place? And those who found again the Ātman in its hiding

place? Whereas the others "constantly go past the hidden treasure of gold, not knowing the

place, without finding it".

It can be understood that even now the clarity about the dividing line

between the spheres of work and knowledge-clarity to which everything

was pointing-was not at once absolutely perfect. Thus it is said in the

concluding sentence of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad: one who has done his

schooling according to rules, studied further the Veda as a householder,

concentrated all his senses upon the Ātman and not hurt anyone during his

lifetime, enters the world of Brahman. But in spite of such occasional

expressions, the separation on the whole, of these two trends of existence is

established in principle: material happiness through works, deliverance in

Brahman only through knowledge.

"Verily, O Gārgī", says Yājñavalkya,119 "the one who brings libations

and offerings and practises austerity for thousand years in this world, but

without knowing the Imperishable, limited indeed is his reward."

But it is said, on the other hand, of a knower:

"If a man understands the Ātman and knows: 'I am he'.

What could he wish or desire that he should pine after body?"

"Whoever has found the Ātman, whoever has awakened120 to him,

Who dwells in the abyss of the (conglomerate) cemented body:

He is the creator, for he has created the All.

His is the world, and he is the world itself."

The pupil speaks to the teacher. "I have heard, Master, from men like

you: 'One who knows the Ātman, overcomes grief.' I am in grief, O Master.

Please help me over this grief of mine." "Since men think that by the know-

ledge of Brahman they become All, what did then that Brahman know,

whereby he became the All? This (sat), indeed, was Brahman in the beginning,

and it knew itself only: 'I am Brahman'. Therefore, it became the All.121 And

whoever of the gods became awakened (to this knowledge),122 he indeed

became it; and the same with the Ṛṣis,123 and men. The Ṛṣi Vāmadeva had seen this and began to sing:

'I became Manu and I became the sun.'124

So also now: one who knows this 'I am Brahman', he becomes this All. And even the gods do not have power to prevent this, for he himself is their Self (ātman)."

Can the Absolute be Known

And a difficulty arises here. A thesis that the Absolute cannot be recognised appears repeatedly and extremely emphatically beside the demand of the Upaniṣads to know the highest sat.125 "You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer or hearing. You cannot think the thinker of thinking. You cannot perceive the perceiver of perception." "Verily, O Gārgī, this Imperishable is the unseen seer, unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unperceived perceiver." "He perceives all this through him, through what he should perceive him ... the perceiver—through what should he then perceive him?" It is possible that the thought that eye cannot see itself has induced this—as a matter of fact, hardly compelling128—consequence: a perception conceiving the Ātman would be a self-perception of this unique perceiver, and therefore, it is ruled out. Is there not a contradiction in the juxtaposition of this demand of such perception and assertion of its impossibility? These thoughts must have been frequently so formulated that this contradiction really exists. Two trends of thoughts starting from different points collide. This is hardly avoidable for an inexperienced thinking not practised in exploring all possibilities. But it appears that one had also in mind the solution of the contradictions. It is remarkable how close to one another these apparently contradictory concepts reach in expression. A sentence directly preceding the dialogue between Yājñavalkya and Gārgī

made naked, above all, from what comes from outside and see the eternal there in the form of permanence." Later Upaniṣads appear to confirm that the ancient texts have just to be understood in this sense. They say of Ātman:127

"Unperceived by the perceiver, perceived by the one, who does not perceive"—

"Not by speech is he reached, not by mind, nor by eye. 'He is' it is said. How otherwise would he be apprehended than through this word?"

The real language of this mysticism, like that of all mysticism, is silence. It may be a later Upaniṣad—it is not available to us—from which the utterance of the wise Bhāva is borrowed and which is delivered by Śaṅkara.128 Someone requested him, "Teach me Brahman, Sir!" He, however, remained silent. The other requetsed him, second, third time. Then he said, "I am teaching you, but you are not noticing it. This Ātman is silence." Not the silence of ignorance, but of knowledge beyond the knowledge, of the highest wealth of seeing and experiencing from within.

All that points out to a path trodden with determination by the ascetic mysticism of Yoga.129 How efforts were made to realise the perception of the unperceivable has to occupy our mind later.—

Desirelessness

Let us return from this digression to the question where the Upaniṣads saw the redeeming power that leads to Brahman.

The first answer reads: knowledge. But basically it is only a difference in formulation when desirelessness is also named instead of knowledge.

The trend of thought that has led to this conception of the doctrine becomes quite clear.

The influence of actions is prevalent in the realm of the finite and in the realm of the transmigration of souls. The actions are founded on the desire of the doer. We have already mentioned above (p. 65) the pronouncement of Yājñavalkya on sleep and death: "Here it is said only: 'Man is made of desire (kāma).' But as his desire, such is his resolve. And as is his resolve, such is his action. And what action he performs, he reaches that existence." If thus the transmigration of souls is determined by desire, then the question inevitably arises: which form of desire it is which leads to the highest otherworldly peak, to Brahman? The answer could be: ending of all desires— desires not aimed at the one last goal. After the transmigration of souls was mentioned, it is said in the passage just quoted:130 "so much for the man who desires. Now for the man who does not desire. One who does not desire, freed from desires, is satisfied in his desires, or desires the Self (ātman) only: his breath-powers do not depart,131 Brahman he is, and to

80

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Brahman he goes." In being free from desire, as it is understood here, there

is at the same time disdain of desire and the sense of being satiated: not the

rich possession of what the world desires, but the possession of the One who

lives beyond, as high as heaven, beyond all desires.

There is no doubt, however, that when here Yājñavalkya characterises

both the sections of pronouncements, those on the death of the one who is not

released and on the death of the one who is released by catch-words "the one

who desires-the one who does not desire", then this antithesis coincides

with the one between ignorance and knowledge, if we look for the contents.

Knowledge is just desirelessness: more exactly: knowledge is the cause, end

of the desire is the consequence. We have already met (p. 77) the one who

understands the Ātman and knows 'I am he'. It is said there:

"What could he wish or desire that he should pine after body?"

The manner in which the same duality-deliverance dependent upon

knowledge and desirelessness-recurs in Buddhism, confirms this conception

of the interrelation between both the formulations. The popular conception

of their rule of faith, the formula of "sacred truths" names "thirst", desire

for finite happiness, as the cause of suffering in the world. The philosophical

conception, on the other hand, "the formula of causation", traces the long

chain of causes and effects which end in old age and death, pain and lamentation, suffering, grief and despair back to "ignorance" as the most profound

cause of causes. But it is not why this formula excludes the category "thirst".

"Thirst" is one of the links of the chain. It connects suffering to ignorance.

We thus see how centuries ago a foundation was laid in the Upaniṣads of the

different forms of the Buddhistic dogma. In fact, it was sometimes more than

a mere foundation.

The Nature of the Process of Deliverance

It is said that the deliverance through the knowledge of Ātman132 that it

does not mean becoming something which was not there before, but perceiving something which was till then unrevealed. We are all-the Upaniṣadic

doctrine may be understood thus-delivered, but this truth is enshrouded in

falsehood. The knowledge: 'I am Brahman' removes the veil; now it dawns

on to us what existed and what exists from eternity to eternity.

We encounter here again a doubtful application of the later Indian views

-even those of some modern thinkers-to antiquity. The Vedantic philosopher Gauḍapāda teaches later, quite in the sense indicated here, that the

souls "awaken" to the redeeming knowledge "as awakened and redeemed

right from the beginning". This is nothing else but a consequence of the basic

view that beside the Ātman which is alone, the world of plurality appears

only by virtue of the illusion of Māyā: in that case, involvement of the ego in

the world and the world-sorrow, and correspondingly its deliverance from it,

can also be only illusion. We attempted above (p. 54) to show that the Māyā-

doctrine was alien to the old Upaniṣads, or at least, that it was not absolutely

81

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

guaranteed by them. It is quite in conformity with it that the apparent nature

of the process of deliverance also refuses the evidence of these texts.133 All

through the suffering to be overcome is discussed in them as something that

is really present, and all through again, its overcoming as a real happening,

and not as an elimination of mere appearance. The references given have

sufficient evidences, and we have absolutely no reason to shove them aside

as somehow inferior, as something of an adaptation to a popular consciousness.

How can it also be found historically and psychologically possible that

this grandiose development of mighty aspirations for deliverance began

initially--even Buddha's doctrine did not think of it so much later--by

explaining the suffering together with the process of deliverance as nothing

but an illusion?

Since suffering is conceived as being based on the association of the

Ātman with corporeality, and since knowledge represents the redeeming

power, it could be logically expected that the association would immediately

come to an end and the knower would die in the moment the knowledge is

obtained. But as it could be understood, this conclusion was not drawn.

People were convinced that there are knowers among the living ones. They

felt that they were one of them. This unevenness of the path of thought

arising here remained unnoticed in the ancient period. Later, as it is

well-known, one liked to help oneself with an analogy of a potshard. The

potshard continues to turn for a while even though the pot is ready.

The Earthly Existence of the Redeemed. Śramaṇahood

A picture of the earthly existence of the one who knows "I am Brahman"

and who lives in peace and tranquillity was painted. The Upaniṣads themselves raise a doubt whether this picture corresponded to reality in their

description of the persons134 appearing in their dialogues. What is more

natural than this: that there remained discords that this grandeur of thinking

seized control, so to say, only in the closed region of the inside and left the

spheres beside it untouched? And therefore, the ideal as such is significant.

It is said of the knower,135 "he is quiet, subdued, satisfied, patient, collected

... free from impurity, free from doubt." "For him, the sun does not rise,

and does not set; for him, there is day, once for all." "Has he crossed the

bank, the blind can see, the wounded is cured and the sick becomes healthy."

It was stressed quite emphatically that the wise man was unmoved by

the influence of good or bad actions: his performance desires from them

neither help nor does he have to be afraid of their interference. "As water

does not adhere to a lotus leaf, so no evil action adheres to the one who

knows this." Besides the psychological-realistic view that the wise man, who

is free from desire, may not act henceforth, there was perhaps, it can be said,

a mystic-magical view that like the past action, so also the future action,

which one would have liked to do, is destroyed by the power of knowledge.

One did not shy away from the consequence that the external existence

of the one who is thus redeemed from the world cannot continue as it was.

To escape death, one flees from life full of death. One has gone one's distance

on the path through this life. One has listened to what "the divine voice, the

thunder" says: da, da, da; that is: dāmyata "restrain yourself", datta "give"

and dayadhvam "be compassionate". This percept more of gentle mildness

than of powerful action was followed.136 One studied the Veda and one had

come beyond it. The reminder that "he thinks not of many words, for that is

a weariness of speech"—he is far from the goal who is only the "knower of

mantra and not of the Ātman" has subdued the limited pride of the one

learned in scriptures. The one has "done away with learnedness and aspired

to become like a child." One also sacrificed and saw through the limited

merit of sacrifices: not for the happiness of gods who do not like to lose a

giver of oblation and Soma-drink. "One who worships another god137

thinking "he is one, I am another, does not know. He is like an animal which

belongs to gods. Really, just as animals give food to men, even so each

single man gives food to gods. If even one animal is taken from someone,

it is unpleasant for him, and what then, if many? Therefore, it is unpleasant

for the gods that men should know it." But the gods have to submit them-

selves to loss; man has achieved knowledge which takes him beyond the

worship of alien powers. What remains then when thus the traditional forms

of religious doings are devalued, when obligation and action has disappeared

from life? What Yājñavalkya says is simple and profound: "He who over-

comes hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death: Brahmanas

who know that Ātman have risen above the desire for sons, wealth and new

worlds and live the life of medicants".138—The Brahmana pupils were called

medicants from the ancient times. Being a medicant was a distinguishing

mark of the one who has given up earthly possession and acquisition for the

sake of a spiritual goal.

Thus a judgment was given now on the position of the knower with

respect to the world, as it could not be otherwise given in India. This was

true for Buddha, and it is true even to this day. The class of the Śramaṇa, of

the one "who toiled" came into existence: those Σαoμavat or Σαμαvaloı

(thus Samaṇa in the form of a popular dialect) who were placed by the Greek

correspondents side by side with the Brahmanas as the second class of

"philosophers".139 Of course, this new class was still quite an unformed

entity. There was indeed still a far cry from every knower of Brahman be-

coming a Śramaṇa. A definite integration of the Śramaṇahood into the nor-

mal path of life, which was prescribed by custom, had, at least, to be

conceived. But the ideal of a Śramaṇa was laid down and had begun to be

realised. Soon the Indian woods were crowded by such ascetics: we see their

image, in fact centuries later, on the old Buddhistic sculptures, how they sat

in front of their leaf-covered huts with long beards and with strong braids of

hair wound around the head. Hermits lived near the fords of the rivers or in

forsaken houses; they marched on high roads in endless wanderings moving

from place to place—of course not intermingled by phoney fools and

quacks—these men and soon women who had drunk deep from the fountain

of hope of the otherworld, and on whose faces it was written that all reality

in which others lived had faded for them before the only reality of their

thinking and seeing.

It is not important whether the Śramaṇa adheres to the last residues of

the old sacrificial cult or not. The real cult and the substance of his life is the

meditative "worship" (upāsana, upaniṣad) of the Supreme Being, dwelling

within him and which he is. It may be compared with the amor intellectualis

of Spinoza silently swaying through the infinity with his tranquillity. The

right Śramaṇa is the one who "obtains greatness among men: who obtains

the gift of meditation as his share". He is different from the small, quarrel-

some and abusing men.140 "The earth meditates as it were. The atmosphere

meditates. The water meditates. Mountains meditate. Gods and men meditate, as it were." The most sublime meditation of the

one who perceives god merges with the meditation of all beings. He feels that

he is not closer to the Supreme Being in the restriction and constraint of

wakeful existence. He is closer to it in the freedom of the dreamfilled sleep. In

it the strange world outside does not cramp his mind. He creates in it his

own world himself— "for he is himself a creator." And yet closer than in

dreams does he come to his goal in absorption of the deepest sleep where

he does not feel any "desire, does not see any dream", but sleeps "like a child

or a great king or a great Brahman in rapturous bliss" and he is "as if in

the embrace of a beloved wife ... nothing without or within. Verily, this is

his form in which his desire is satisfied, in which the Self is his desire, in which

he is without desire and without sorrow. There a father is not a father, a

mother, not a mother, the worlds, not the worlds, the gods, not the gods ...

for he has passed beyond all sorrows of the heart."

The Beginnings of Yoga

When now the extinction of personal life in the deepest sleep is highly

celebrated, it appears—we cannot speak here with complete conviction—that

the ascetics of these times began to partake of another enjoyment. This is

only its prelude. I am thinking here of those physiologically and also patho-

logically defined characteristic conditions of ecstatic seeing. These conditions

were very much restricted in their nature in terms of time. They bestowed an

incomparable bliss later in India to those adept in Yoga and to the mystics

outside India. The whole milieu of the older Upaniṣads and particularly the

mode of expression of individual passages141 bearing resemblance to Yoga

give the impression that such ecstasies were already known to this age,

although it did not plan them and propogate them as the fully developed

Yoga did it. And therefore, only a faint picture of the phenomena and of the

mighty, inner experiences can be drawn. Of course, these experiences were

rather flashy, but they were shared by many ascetics who strove for merging

with the Brahman.

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

The man who meditates sits in an erect posture. Regularity of breathing radiates peace through his body. When still a thought reverts to the distant worldliness he has forsaken, worlds over worlds, existences above existences, appear to him like an unforeseeable jungle as if in a nebula—life and death, men, gods, Vedas and sacrifices: all the smoky clouds whirling up from the fire of the Supreme Being. But he restrains the profusion of these forms. His goal is in the realm of the formless. At first, they are still visible visions in which the one exalted over all the visible is proclaimed. The 'man who lives in the right eye' is the essence of what is not formed—the visions flash : "just like a robe coloured with safran, like a white sheep's wool, like a Coccinel-beetle, a flame of fire, a white lotus-flower, a sudden flash of lightning." And other residues of particular idea or not so particular idea, are left with the imagination as pivots. He may worship the Supreme Being as knowledge, as truth, as something he likes, as joy. Or as "that sun: when he was born shouts of hurrah arose, and all beings, all wishes." Or in the sacred word Om, in humming of the ear, in the heat of the body, in the juice which gives life to the tree, the meditator may hear, feel the presence of the highest. But such last residues of definiteness also float away and sink. And the seeing mind also sinks. The ego does not live any more; sat lives in him, the "No, no" not embraced in any form. It stands before the eye, enveloped in nothing—rather the beholding eye itself, the innermost of the soul, is merged with its infinity.

Tat tvam asi.—

Egoism in the Ideal of Deliverance

It is true, the sage as he appears in the Upaniṣads was little worried about applying this Tat tvam asi to the fellow creatures. These duties and virtues of the mundane life were for him the things of the past. The reminder "to see all beings in his own Self and his Self in all beings" rang only momentarily in his ears. "That you are" means for him, above all, "that I am". "The husband is not dear, because he is a husband. The husband is dear for love of the Self." It has been aptly remarked that in all this remoteness of asceticism from the old sacrifice, the atmosphere of the envious rivalry prevalent among sacrificers has been preserved unaltered.142 It sounds as if one was afraid of becoming poor by making others rich with one's treasures of knowledge: "The father may teach this Brahman to his eldest son or to a trusted pupil: to no one else, whosoever he may be. And even if one were to give him this earth encom-passed by water and filled with treasures: he should think that this is more than that." What a way from here to there, where Buddha said, "Opened is the door of immortality to those who have ears." But whom should it surprise that where such new expanses were opened in the Upaniṣads, there remained a residue of narrow-mindedness? And it was left to the future to overcome it?

Death of the One Who Is Redeemed

Death of the one who has attained immortality comes after this asceticism dedicated to reflection and meditation.

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Also unclear mingling of customary concepts has obviously been preserved here as everywhere else in the Upaniṣads among the ideas which belonged to the peculiar trend of thoughts of this period. We have already seen (p. 61) how the Brahman entered by the redeemed accomplishes the feat, while remaining Brahman, of assuming the form of a personal god. The redeemed gets his glory: he is no more a god who is called Yama or Varuṇa, but just Brahman. Five hundred heavenly nymphs come unto the wandering soul on the way to him: hundred bring fruits, hundred eye-ointments, hundred garlands, hundred clothes, hundred powdered aromatics. Thus it goes to the city and palace of Brahman. He sits there on his throne. A conversation ensues between him and the soul, in which the soul, well-equipped through the Upaniṣads, is shown as perfectly well-versed in all the mysteries.143 Another passage144 describes the freedom the knower has in the otherworld to the point that he not only shares the world of "fathers" or of "mothers", but also "the world of fragrances and garlands", "of eating and drinking", "of the song and the string-music" and of "women" : thus it could also appear quite mundane in the heights of the otherworld.

Let us look back to the pure, consequential doctrine of the Upaniṣads from these hybrid concepts. It is in those utterances of Yājñavalkya on sleep and death which were partially quoted earlier (comp. p. 79): "Now the one who does not have desire. He who is without desire...desiring of Ātman. His breath-powers do not depart.146 Brahman he is, to Brahman he goes...As a slough of a snake lies on an ant-hill, dead, cast off, even so lies this body. But this bodiless, immortal odem is only Brahman, only light."146

It appears that in spite of the expression "to Brahman he goes" a path into the greatest distances was not thought of, but rather a merging with the omni-present absolute existence which is just accomplished here. Also a verse quoted at the same place says:

"The mortal becomes immortal. Here he proceeds to Brahman."

How similarly in the condition of deep sleep (see above p. 83f.) which is a transient image of union with Brahman, the Self does not depart outwards, but it retreats into the innermost of its corporeal abode. In fact, it appears that "here" of the verse just quoted has to be taken literally as "here" and is to be understood in this sense. Then the freedom and maturity in the treatment of the conception of space which knows to represent the peculiar empire of the Brahman exalted over the world, as present here and everywhere, also without an outwardly exaltation, in the highest peaks would date back to this passage. It is true that the conception would falter with respect to this, as it often happens in the Upaniṣads. A few verses on the path where the white and the dark-blue, brown, green and red are found are quoted after the prose sentences ("is only Brahman, only light") reproduced above. This is typical of the Upaniṣads where something very great gives way to petty and wild imaginations. These white, dark-blue, etc., are the arteries full of colourful fluids which sprout forth from the heart and end up in the rays of the sun and

are connected in this way with the heart and the sun "as a great extending

highway going to two villages, this one and the yonder."147 Yājñavalkya says

that this is the path

"On which the wise, the knowers of Brahman, go up

Hence to the heavenly world, redeemed"—

This is clearly the same point of view which often appears in the Upaniṣads.

And this ancient period has hardly come out of it except at the most in indivi-

dual moments. From the existence here ruled by Brahman, "the divine path" of the redeemed goes up beyond the sun148—this portal of the world, "an

entrance for the knowers, sealed for the ignorants"—to the heights to be

understood in all concreteness of space, where the Brahman abides in its soli-

tude. When it is said of the redeemed elsewhere: "In those Brahman-worlds

they inhabitate the highest distance; there is no return for them", it appears to

be referring to the survival of an individual existence in those heights. But

that is not obviously the purest, perfect form of the Upaniṣadic doctrine.

Yājñavalkya says to Maitreyī: "After death, there is no consciousness." The

Ātman returning from the corporeality to itself, in its own realm, enters that

absolute unity, that unconscious bliss, whose prelude on earth is the deepest

sleep.149—

Doubts About the Character of Hope in Immortality

Did the image of immortality that was thus envisaged satisfy all?

The story of Indra's schooling with Prajāpati150 may raise a doubt about it.

Prajāpati describes to the god the highest bliss just in that form of dream-

less sleep. " 'If a person has rested in sleep with his whole existence and does

not see any dream: that is the Ātman'—thus he spoke—'that is immortality,

freedom from fear, that is Brahman'. He (Indra) went with contented heart

from there. But then even before reaching the gods this thought came to his

mind and instilled fear in him: 'In this way, one does not understand oneself,

and also not the other beings. He is gone and lost. I do not see any happiness

in it.' " So Indra returns to Prajāpati and expresses his doubt to him. He

answers: "So it is indeed with him (the Ātman), O Maghavan.151 But I shall

explain him further to you. There is no solution other than in him. Stay with

me for five more years (as my pupil)."

And what does the divine teacher at the end of these years do to satisfy

the doubt of his listener? The text leaves us here dissatisfied. We get an impres-

sion that the author who knew to hold fast the thread happily till then, breaks

down just shortly before the end. Instead of ascending from the dreamless

sleep to something ultimate, most sublime, he descends, it appears to a lower

wrung of the ladder. Of course, he speaks at first of entering bodiless the

highest light. But then he describes this again as a condition in which the

"highest mind" laughs and plays and enjoys women and does not think of the

body he has forsaken. Is this to be explained as an ecstasy filled with hallucina-

tions?152 In any case, this passage is characteristic for the confusion which is

so often there in the Upaniṣads; it is worthless for our knowledge to know

how one has come in terms with the contemplative observations of Indra.

The story shows that the thinkers of the Upaniṣads were not overwhelmed

by a feeling of discontentment with these observations. The Brahmanic thin-

king—and we shall see that this is also basically valid for the Buddhistic—

adhered to the blissful merging with infinity as a goal from the period of the

old Upaniṣads through a long future. Let this be expressed here once more

with the words of an Upaniṣad.153

"As the flowing rivers disappear in the ocean

Quitting name and form,

So a wise man, freed from name and form,

Goes to the divine Person, greater than the great."

THE LITERARY FORM OF THE UPANIṢADS

Plurality of Upaniṣads. Their Affiliation to the "Forest Texts"

Our attention is attracted, besides the doctrine of the Upaniṣads, by the

manner in which they are presented. This presentation is a peculiar mixture of

artlessness and art, a helpless stammering and an inspiration of genius.

There were a number of different Upaniṣads from the beginning: not just

only different editions of one Upaniṣad. This was due to the circumstances in

which the Vedic literature existed. No text could exist in this scriptless age

without a school which delivered it orally from generation to generation. But

the dependence of the Upaniṣadic speculation upon the trends of thoughts

of the Brāhmaṇa-texts from which it emerged and to which it was connected

with thousand threads in spite of its attempt of untangling itself from them,

made it obvious that the organisation of the Brāhmaṇa-schools liked to take

over also the tradition of the Upaniṣads. These schools, therefore, by virtue

of their pre-history, adapted themselves from the beginning to the separation

of the three Vedas and their individual major schools. This proved in any case

to be more decisively contrary to tendencies of "their own existence. They

became appendages of the Brāhmaṇas or even directly their parts : particularly

of those Brāhmaṇas which were not recited in a village on account of their

extreme sacredness or their magically dangerous nature. They were recited in

wilderness and were included in the Āraṇyakas or "Forest Texts."154 We have,

therefore, to imagine a forest, i.e., a desolute land outside the village as a

scenery of these traditional works. There those chosen pupils who had learnt

the percepts and hidden meaning of fire and Soma sacrifice in the village were

instructed in the doctrine of the Supreme Being and deliverance and in the

mysteries like those of the powerful rain-magic and the sun-magic. Of course,

all this was preceded by fasting and observing silence. These were the mysteries

whose aloofness from one another was obviously not generally felt. And even

if such magic of higher style might have had a certain sense of being shrouded

in the horror of the immense it shares with the revelations of the Ātman, then

it does not mean that a boundary was drawn against the lower and lower-

most magic. Rules of all sorts of tricks are given even in the Upaniṣads. They

claimed an access into such a noble surrounding obviously only on the basis

of their secret nature. It concerned there a sort of a drink with the help of

which one obtained “greatness”. It was about a magic of love, a magic against

illicit relationship with a woman or a magic for the birth of a son. Not much

of this found an access into the Upaniṣads. But it is part and parcel of their

image that such sections appear there, and it is difficult to define their contents.

We do not know to associate the origin of the Upaniṣads with the names

of definite authors. The heads of the schools to whom the different branches

of the Veda were traced could be considered as the authors of the Upaniṣads

belonging to relevant schools or as the authors of the Brāhmaṇas. But

that was obviously a fiction. It can also be hardly believed that the thinkers

whose names were partially identical with those heads of the schools appear-

ing the dialogues of the Upaniṣads were the authors. They are on the whole

just the names, and they play a role in the discussion of the Brāhmaṇa-texts

on the sacrifice. It can be understood that the ingeniously pious tradition also

left it to these men to proclaim the doctrine of the Brahman. But that they

have really done it, appears to be hardly possible in view of the other spiritual

tradition prevalent in this doctrine and, by all appearances, its considerable

later origin on the whole.

Composers. List of Teachers. Their Distribution Among Vedic Schools

It may also be mentioned here that long lists of several Vedic texts have

survived, among them also the most important of the Upaniṣads, resp., of

their individual major parts. These lists trace back the information about the

relevant text from the present editors onwards to teachers after teachers.

In such lists, firstly, the ascention to the regions of the school-heads mentioned

earlier and the other authorities of the Brāhmaṇa-texts can be, at times,

followed; then to the legendary composers of the Vedic hymns and the ances-

tors of the great generations of the Brahmanas. And finally through every

sublimated primordial being, say, up to the Sun-god or to the Brahman which

is self-existent. It can be believed that the lower parts of these lists contain

truth. A point appears to be convincingly marked in one or two cases at

which several streams of tradition at first running side by side have merged in

the same bed. And this is also very well thinkable that the authentic names of

the authors of larger or smaller fragments of Upaniṣads have found place in

the midst of these lists of names. But we cannot trace them out. Even if we

were to do it, such bare names would also tell us ultimately very little. And

thus it is true that we have to be satisfied with the colourless idea that here

and there in the lap of the Vedic schools, in the movement of slowly flowing

masses of ideas, these texts—mostly, as we shall see soon, in fairly small

fragments—have been composed by different authors whose personality has

remained in the dark. Literary ownership right or author’s vanity was un-

known to these circles. They meant only to propogate an eternal knowledge

received from the others: similar to what happened later, when the Buddhistic

monk who composed his educative addresses or poems was conscious of the

fact that he had to express only what Buddha and the countless Buddhas of

past eternities had expressed. Now shallow, confused braggarts and nigglers

were to be heard in the Upaniṣads, now, in very seldom cases, thinkers who

were made to find a profound word coming from the very bottom of their

heart to express powerful thoughts and presentiments. Of course, examining

hands of critical interpreters have sorted out wheat from the chaff here as

they did earlier in collecting the hymns of the Veda, or later in editing Buddhis-

tic sacred texts. It is important for the observer not to have an eye only for

the wheat nor only for the chaff, but to understand the process which mixed

the two with one another, as far as it can be historically understood.

The inventory of the Upaniṣads is distributed unevenly over the different

Vedas and Vedic schools. Mostly the white Yajurveda stands out, both in

terms of size and inner significance, for the greater part on account of the

age of its Upaniṣad (Bṛhad Āranyaka Upaniṣad). The Sāmaveda is next to it

(Chāndogya Upaniṣad). It is not seldom that schools have influenced one

another, exchanged significant and impressive parts. Thus occasionally, what

should belong and actually belonged originally to one of the Vedas by virtue

of the apparent points of view of the priestly and the sacrificial technique, got

later into another Veda on account of the prominent interest, but independent

of those points of view. It is characteristic of the point at which the develop-

ment stands. It is close to the nature of sacrifice and liturgy, and yet at the

same time, it is freeing itself from it or it has already freed itself.

Consisting of Brief Text-Pieces

It was already mentioned that the Upaniṣads consist of shorter or longer—

mostly not very long—individual text-pieces. These individual pieces are put

together, but mostly not properly arranged. Together they form the Upani-

ṣads. Or they are at first smaller collections, the more original Upaniṣads put

together. And when they are combined, they form the whole of the Upaniṣads

which are now before us. Even in the sphere of an incomparably higher art of

thinking and literary technique, Xenophon and Plato did not think of presen-

ting the system of Socratic and Platonic philosophy built upon a uniform plan,

but they presented in brief the Socratic, Platonic mode of thinking by apply-

ing it to various problems. Same thing has happened here. Same thing also

happened centuries later in the written works of the ancient Buddhists. Of

course, the fixed course of an individual sacrifice, the grouping of different

sacrifices, which had been formed on its own, had, in the Brāhmaṇa-period

itself, led to the emergence of larger literary complexes, creating, in certain

sense, formal systems. And at that time what mattered was the description

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THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

91

and interpretation of sacrifices. But the masses of thoughts which had to be

presented in the Upaniṣads did not line up in rank and file with such a truism

as components of that knowledge of sacrifices. Thus a problem after another

was discussed—as it had also happened in the Brāhmaṇa-texts beside systema-

tic commentaries,—or the same problem again and again on account of the

comparatively constant fundamental conceptions prevalent here. Or some-

times various confused ideas, thought-or word-games were presented. The

learner had not yet learnt, while looking at one problem, not to lose the sight

of the other, or to look completely clear about the connection of the one with

the other, or to look at only the whole that comprises in itself everything else

as it parts. But on the whole, the basic tendencies of thinking which remained

unchanged to some extent, kept actually the track of the individual so far

that we on our part can and must put together a reasonably corresponding

total image of the prevalent views expressed here. But it had not been actually

present in the mind of those ancients as such a total image and in a tidy system

we unavoidably impart to it. We must place on the side of this sentence also

its opposite that the confusion, the uncertainty of the Upaniṣadic texts, does

not completely reflect the real spiritual possession of their authors. What was

not expressed must have been constantly there besides what was expressed,

although to some extent not clear enough, but all the same, together pointing

to the whole. There is a galore of contradictions in all individual examples.

How could it be different? There were different schools beside one another

or opposed to one another; and within every school, there were independent

thinkers and those without any thought. Even in these esoteric speculations

there are collegues in such masses as they appear once everywhere and inevita-

bly in the literary activity in India. And among these masses, every individual

was constantly moved here and there by different motives and changing

moods. Now the logic of thought drove him forward; now the memory of

the old, antiquated thought made him retreat his step. Under these circum-

stances, the total progress of the intellectual work could impossibly be represen-

ted, so to say, as a uni-dimensional line. It had rather to resemble a river,

which is sometimes broad, sometimes narrow, meandering its way, branching

off on the right and on the left, forming lakes, and flowing further slowly over

various obstructions, but ultimately flowing in the direction of its goal.

Larger Compositions

An advancement over the form of brief isolated individual pieces men-

tioned above is visible in the Upaniṣads, at least, in the beginning. We shall

discuss soon in detail such advancement in our description of the dialogues.

They play a significant role here. We may mention here an example—the most

prominent offered by the older Upaniṣads—of a planned integration of smaller

units into a significant whole: an example of the excellent dialogues of

Yājñavalkya. They take the listener, step by step, closer to the understanding

of the highest goal, the goal of merging with the imperishable Ātman.157 The

series of images drawn by Yājñavalkya come from humdrum conditions of

wakeful existence. The highest light shines in this existence itself: the light of

the Self (Ātman) which shines for the man, even though the sun and the moon

have set, the fire extinguished, and every word is silenced. And now Yājñaval-

kya pursues, step by step, progressive freeing of the Self from the hurdles it

faces in that existence. Step by step, the listener urges the speaker on, when

he again and again desires not to stop before the end, before he is redeemed.

After the awakening follows the sleep in which the Self creates its own world

in a dream. A dreamless sleep follows a dream-filled sleep—how earnestly and

minutely sleep is treated here by dividing it in two types of completely different

natures! Then Yājñavalkya turns to death. But the death of the one not

redeemed is not yet deliverance; it is a transition of the wandering soul into

a new existence. Then follows finally the last, the highest: the death of the

one without desires, of the one delivered. "Brahman he is, to Brahman he

goes." And on reaching the goal Yājñavalkya's language assumes a poetic

form; it turns into a hymn on the glory of the Imperishable. One who is

familiar with the Buddhistic literature will be reminded by this section of the

Upaniṣad of that sermon of Buddha which describes, in a similar sequence of

stages, the blessings rewarding the ascetic for his efforts to get deliverance.158

This sequence corresponds to the progress of literary and philosophical

development in the structure which was planned in a better and more artistic

manner. The discourse progressed from honours and preferences the man

enjoys in his everyday life to higher and higher inner gains, and finally after

going through all the stages of ecstasies and enlightenments, the highest

knowledge shines. It is a complete liberation: "destroyed is the re-birth, the

sacred path of life accomplished, the work done; there is no more return to

this worldliness." It is remarkable how in the Upaniṣad and in this sermon of

Buddha, a similarity of the ideal occasions a similar structure of the pronoun-

cement. It is a promising beginning in the Upaniṣad and it is a climax of the

same great trend of thinking, of the same form of proclamation in the Buddhis-

tic Sūtra.

Upaniṣad in its Narrower Sense (Text of "Worship")

Of the peculiar, distinctive types of philosophising depiction within the

Upaniṣads, we have to emphasise those Upaniṣads in the narrower sense of

the word which have given the name to the whole group of the texts.159 We

have already alluded, in another context, to the discussions (p. 23f. above)

how one should perform the "worship" (upanisad) of a particularly lofty object

of worship and its reverential fixation by thought and under what name. The

development of these texts of "worship", it appears, can be quite distinctly

followed. Their beginnings were in no way concerned with the only Supreme

Being. They trace back to an earlier stage, and they are still rooted in the

ritualistic theology. There are already "Upaniṣads" to which due respect was

shown. And it is not tiring to study them. "In this Upaniṣad", it is said once—

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THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

93

i.e., in thinking over in his mind this Upaniṣad—“Tārukṣya protected cows

for one year.” It is said of such “mysterious instructions”, i.e., about the

special phrasing of worship that they are the “essence of the essence, for the

Vedas are essence, and these are essence of the Vedas. They are the ambrosia

of ambrosia. For the Vedas are ambrosia-like: they are the ambrosia of the

Vedas.” To illustrate this, let us select an argument based on an older point

of view. The first words of the great Chāndogya Upaniṣad are: “Om! One

should worship the Udgītha as this syllable,180 for one sings it (beginning)

with Om”. Udgītha is the main part, a climax of the Sāman, of the liturgic

song. The holy syllable Om (“Amen”) introduces it; it acquires, so to say, its

power. Thus this form and the formula of “worship” directs the singer to the

most concentrated substance of his liturgic action. At the same time, it directs

him, according to the mode of thinking of the Indian priest, to something

more general. These introductory words of the Upaniṣad are followed by

these sentences: “The explanation of this is as under: The essence of all these

beings is the earth. The essence of the earth is water. The essence of water are

the plants. The essence of plants is man.161 The essence of man is speech. The

essence of speech is Ṭc (a verse of the Ṛgveda). The essence of Ṛc is the

Sāman. The essence of the Sāman is the Udgītha. This is the most essential

of all essences, the highest, the supreme,162 the eighth.” Thus this “worship”

means that the substance of the sat is collected in one last essence of all

essences. The knower acquires its efficacy through his knowledge and worship.

“What one performs with knowledge, with faith, with the Upaniṣad”,163 this

section of the Upaniṣad concludes, “is more powerful. This is, therefore, the

explanation of the syllable (Om).”

Many elaborate discourses on “worship” follow in the same text. Expla-

nations are given which refer the forms of worship now “to Self”, now “to

deity” (comp. p. 14 above). It is breath there, then eye, speech, in short, the

whole circle of powers and functions referring to a person with whom these

formulas and explanations are concerned; here are the cosmic deities like the

earth, air, sky, the sun, the moon. Stories of these “worships” are narrated.

The gods have worshipped Udgītha, and they lost or won the battle against

the evil demons depending upon what wrong or right they did. Brahmanas

discuss Udgītha, its connection with the world as a whole, and the one “who

worships it (Udgītha) thus knowing’ is promised a high reward in this or the

other world. The rule is constantly repeated in the form of tables: “One should

worship this and that, so and so”; and in addition, there are promises for the

one who worships knowingly, also for the one—what is meant is the same—

who knows this and that. Then there are observances with respect to these

rules on worship or knowledge similar to it in nature. One who chooses a

specific form of understanding a liturgic mystery has to observe—correspon-

ding, as it appears, to a scheme coming from a primative pre-culture—some-

thing unusual, a taboo in his action, or in his giving up something. His devo-

tion to the entity he worships is expressed there. One who concentrates his

meditation on the Sāman as interwoven in fire, or as interwoven in copulation,

or as interwoven in the limbs of the body, is not allowed correspondingly to

wash his mouth while facing the fire or expectorate, to avoid any woman or

to eat for a year any marrow or to eat any marrow at all.

It is seen how verigated presentations come together there to form a

certain uniformity. Instructions on expression and symbolism, supposed to

be relevant for worship, in addition, speculative-imaginative explanations,

and finally several discussions, stories, promises and rules of behaviour:

everything finds its focus, its leitmotiv in constantly recurring concept of

worship.

The point or rather the most important of the points, characterised by

the catchword “worship” (Upaniṣad) lies where the newly arising literature

of Ātman-speculation gets added to the literature of the old ritualistic-liturgic

symbolism.164 It gave up the path of sacrifice, the most trodden path on which

the cult moved, in order to march upon the path of worship: the worship to

which the last essence of all existence was dedicated.

The main question—what is that Supreme Being and how a man can

reach it—assumes, constantly in this literature, an appearance of investi-

gating the form of worship of that Being. As we could see from the worship of

Udgītha, so now the worship of Brahman is sought. “For him verily”, it is

said, “the sun does not rise and does not set. For him there is day, once and

for all, who knows thus this Upaniṣad (worship) of Brahman.”165 A circle of

Brahmanas scribes raise the question: “What is Ātman? What is Brahman?”

They go to an initiate: he is studying what is Ātman; he should explain. He

questions them one after the other: “In what form do you worship (upāsse)

the Ātman? They answer: as the sky—as the sun—as the wind, etc. Then he

instructs them how they really should worship (upāste) the Ātman. “One who

worships him only as breath, as speech, eye, ear, mind”, it is said in another

passage, “he does not understand it. For he is divided by these individual

entities. Let a man worship him as Ātman alone, for all entities become one

in it ... One who worships another god and thinks, ‘He is different, I am

different’, he does not understand it” (comp. p. 82). Further it is narrated

in another context how the king Janaka gives to the sage Yājñavalkya expla-

nations which he once himself sought from his teacher: Brahman is speech;

it is life, etc. There is grain of truth in each of these explanations: speech does

not desert him, life does not desert him, “who knowingly worships (upāste)

this as such.” “So have it, great king”, Yājñavalkya now continues, “as one

gets for a long journey a vehicle or a ship, your soul must be prepared with

these worships (upaniṣad)”—upon which the sage communicates to him the

last, the highest, that one does not have: the knowledge of Ātman.

It is seen—and many more compilations I may make here would give

again and again the same result—how the Upaniṣadic texts are thoroughly

filled with discussions on the right catchword for worship of the Supreme

Being, with rejections or conditional acceptance of abortive or incomplete

expressions, with the description of progressive approximation to correct

phrasing. To know the worship of that Being is equated to knowing its name.

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"His Upaniṣad is the real of the real"—but the name is indeed a mystical

equivalent of the Being he names. Therefore, as we have already mentioned,

it amounts for the texts to the same thing to know the Absolute as a parti-

cular entity and worship it as that entity.186 It is not here a question of know-

ledge which would be only a cold and irreverent understanding. And also not,

one can add, of a knowledge of terms, which delineated by definitions, would

definitely appear before the mind of the knower clearly and objectively. One

does not possess the art of defining. It could not also have been a child's play

with respect to these entities that they are not only what they are, but they

sway away beyond all the limits of a magic flight. Then phrases are used like

formulas of worship at the right time to effuse their floating brilliance and

the thrill of worshipping meditation through the souls: the "No, no", "the

real of the real", or puzzling words of wanton obsfucation: "he may peacefully

worship it as jalān." One can, therefore, easily understand the significance

which such Upaniṣads get for the whole of the text named after them.

Dialogues

The dialogue emerges particularly strongly from among the elements

which constitute the Upaniṣads. An Indian counterpart for Plato's dialogues,

like the Bharhut-sculptures for those of Parthenon.

Brief conversations between those experienced in sacrifice on ritualistic

problems are not uncommon in the Brāhmaṇa-texts. The use of dialogue

form in the Upaniṣads ensues from it. But the dialogues appear here more

often, they are of considerable length, and correspondingly more significant.

This can be easily understood.

The old sacrificial wisdom was limited on the whole in the midst of a

circle of knowers who were all on the same footing. But the higher knowledge

of the Brahman, on the other hand, was a monopoly of a few selected indi-

viduals. They also imparted it again to individuals, to the chosen few: a

process which got a character of an exceptionally important event. There was

no hope of getting this knowledge by other means. Something like that might

appear unthinkable to a Socratic pupil, except to be awakened to a higher

spiritual life by association with the peerless master. In one Upaniṣad, a

pupil speaks to the teacher,187 "I have heard of men like you, O Master, that

knowledge which is learnt from a teacher alone leads to real goal." In another

passage, there is simile for it; the one being led astray with the eyes covered.

The bandage is removed, and he asks for the way home: thus he also knows

that "one who has found a teacher" would also reach the goal of deliverance.

It is, therefore, to be understood that the concept of this knowledge is, right

from the beginning, closely associated with the concrete image of exalted

knowers and their teachings.

Their External Form, Participating Persons

The external form of such informative stories, description of persons, of

his knowledge, with swollen head. But he does not possess that precious

knowledge. The father talks to him about the sat. It is the father and the son

between whom that word has been said: Tat tvam asi, "That you are, O

Śvetaketu".

Husband and wife talk to each other. Yājñavalkya, about to leave the

world as hermit, wants to make final settlement between his two wives,

Maitreyī "who knows the speech of Brahman" and Kātyāyanī "who knows

only what all women know". We have already described (p. 70) how

Maitreyī scorns material possession and wants to know about the immortality

in the otherworld. "You are truly dear to me, and you have increased what

is dear to me in you", speaks the husband. "Well, I shall explain it to you

now. But ponder well on what I tell you." And there begin those profound

discourses of Yājñavalkya. "Thus spake Yājñavalkya and went his way."

The knower has to do with a rich man of the world, particularly with a

king. The Upaniṣads sketch this small despot having large herds in such a

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the situations at their root, is always very simple. Men who converse here

are obviously predominantly Brahmanas. The texts give a series of images of

their life. They are short, clumsy sketches. But there is a waft of air in them

which was breathed by the ancients. And we encounter, now venerable, now

bizarre, phantoms of their own self, of Brahmanic thinkers—of those who

hid themselves behind the secretmongering verbosity, and also those, who

having discovered the mystery of the Brahman, have found peace in it.

The event soon transpires in the house of a Brahmana: in a village, for

there was hardly anything of city life then. We imagine in the proximity of

sacrificial places and grazing grounds with large cowherds, happiness and

pride of their owners.

One of the simple scenes taking place there:168 Several intelligent gentle-

men come together, all "rich in possession and learnedness". They go to-

gether to a reputed expert; but he is not sure of his knowledge and sends

them further to another person, strangely enough to a king. They find their

goal with his help. We shall come back to this role which for some time has

been given to a king.

Another small scene. Two Brahmanas are eating together. A begging

pupil comes to them. He is given nothing. He knows to give a meaningful

riddle. "Give him food", it is said now.

A youth by name "Satyakāma" reports to a teacher as his pupil. He asks

him from what family he comes. My mother told me, she had moved about

a lot in her youth; she does not know anything about my father. No one but

a true Brahmana, says the teacher, is so honest. Fetch firewood; you may

become my pupil.

Son of a Brahmana comes running. Someone asked him questions he

cannot answer. Does the father know the answer? No—"So much you must

know me, my boy! Whatsoever I myself know, I have taught you all." And

the father goes to the questioner and joins him as his pupil.

The son, 24 years old, returned home after his apprenticeship, proud of

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way as a Brahmanic philosopher would like to fancy him to be: a man with

unlimited solitude and humility towards intellectually famous people, and

equally unlimited generosity. It can be felt from this that the existence of the

Brahmanic gentleman depended in reality completely upon king's mercy

and whim, in spite of that idealisation.

There is that destitute Brahmana Uṣasti (p. 3) who has succeeded in

begging for himself a portion of rice-gruel. He gets up next morning and

tells his wife, "If I could only get some food now, I might get a little wealth."

Fortunately, his wife had preserved something from the previous day: "There

is rice-gruel". He eats and goes to a place where a sacrifice is being offered

by the king. The singers who are supposed to start a litany have already

taken their seats. Without any ado he goes and sits next to them and speaks

to them more bluntly than politely: Your head will fall off, if you sing with-

out possessing the secret knowledge. "They stopped and seated themselves

in silence." The king, however, knows to appreciate the noble guest with due

respect. He appoints him to look after the sacrifice. He does not miss the

opportunity of asking for as much reward as the other priests put together.

And now, upon their request, Uṣasti teaches them that secret with which

he had so powerfully triumphed over them.

A strange illustration of an intercourse of the wise and the rich is given

by the story of Raikva. This story would appear to us as a distortion, but as

a matter of fact, it contains a genuine example of ancient Indian reality.

Swans flying past in the night sang the praise of Raikva. Who is Raikva?

People look for him, but in vain. Finally he is found "where one searches for

a Brahmana"—he is sitting underneath a cart and scratching his sores. Now

the rich Jānaśruti goes out to him and brings him a present of six hundred

cows, an ornament of gold, a carriage drawn by mules: "Teach me the deity

you worship"—we can easily recognise here the constant leitmotiv of the

Upaniṣads (p. 91ff.): the question about the worship to be made.—But the

actually asserts it clearly. So a competition of rhetorics flares up. Nine

opponents appear with their questions addressed to Yājñavalkya, but get

defeated one after the other. There were also two women in the rank and

file of the Brahmanas. It is one of these ladies who opens her attack parti-

cularly impetuously. She makes the opponent feel in advance in what

difficult position he might be: "Like the son of a mighty hero of Kāśi or

Videha might string his loosened bow and take up in the hand two foe-

piercing arrows, I have risen to fight you with two questions. Solve me these."

But like others, this quarrelsome philosopher lady was silenced and she says

to her companions, "Venerable Brahmanas! Be happy, if you can get off by

bowing before him. But none of you can defeat him in intellectual rhetorics."

The last of the nine champions does not, however, take the warning. He also

is obviously defeated. "The Brahmanas took you, thus, to extinguish ambers

for them", says Yājñavalkya with despisè. And the head of the opponent

falls off: the due fate of the one who does not pass an examination. "And

thieves took away his bones mistaking them for something else."—

Emergence of Princes?

The role between a Brahmana and a king had been interchanged here and

there in the Upaniṣads. We have already given one example (p. 95). There

is one more example:171 The Brahmana Gāṅgya had tried in vain to explain

Brahman to the king Ajātaśatru of Kāśi (Banaras). Ashamed, he could not

do it, he became silent. "But Ajātaśatru said, 'Is that all?'—'That is all.'—

'What you say is not sufficient to know (the Brahman).' Gāṅgya replied, 'Let

me come to you as your pupil.' But Ajātaśatru answered, 'It is contrary to

the course of things that a Brahmana becomes a pupil of a Kṣatriya to know

about the Brahman from him. However, I shall teach you.' " And what the

Brahmana could not do, the king succeeded in doing it.

With examples like these, one tried to promote a view that the doctrine

of the Supreme Being, in contradiction to the ancient sacrificial theology of

the Brahmanas, is to be considered as a creation of the status. "Fame is due

to the warrior-caste", says a prominent researcher,172 "for causing a great

98

revolution in the intellectual life of ancient India in right understanding of

the thoughtless sacrificial science and its ludicrous symbolism by revelation

of a new world of ideas." I think, he has hit much beyond the mark.

Evidences ascribing that knowledge to the Brahmanas outnumber excessively

those which glorify the Kṣatriyas as experts of the highest mysteries. For

example, that passage on renunciation of the world by the knowers (p. 82).

speaks of Brahmanas roaming around as beggars and giving up the desire

for sons and possession. It is very difficult to render this so easily compre-

hensible fact invalid by thinking that the edition of the texts traces back to

the Brahmanas, and that is why few of these unfavourable evidences are more

important than many favourable ones. It may be noted, how step by step,

and quite inconspicuously, the speculations of the Brahman-doctrine were

developed from those of the sacrificial symbolism, i.e., from spheres of

thoughts which revealed priestly nature. And how Brahman was a poten-

tiality inherent in the Vedic word and the Brahmanic status that was elevated

to the Brahman as the Absolute. Thus the question whether the Brahmanas

or the Kṣatriyas have understood the Supreme Being in the form of Brahman

is automatically answered.

Only this seems to be correct that the people of social standing from

materialistic communities have now begun to participate in this spiritual

movement, and they have left their traces in the evidences like those we have

mentioned.178 In view of its nature, this movement had indeed forced back

the exceptional position of the Brahmana-caste, the thrust being stronger,

the longer it remained rooted in the belief in magic of the ancient period.

How could the distinction between those who emanated from the head of the

Puruṣa and those from the arms, the distinction between those who were

qualified to participate in the Soma-draught and those who were not qualified

assert itself in the long run in the face of the excessive might of the Supreme

Being, of the weighty importance of the problem of deliverance? Buddha and

his contemporary Nāṭaputta, the founder of the Jaina-community belonged

to a profane nobility.174 Dominating position of such men in the religious

movement had its beginning here, though for that time, only in isolated

beginnings. But it may also be maintained, as far as I can see, that the texts

never let the princely personalities discuss the speculative problems among

themselves, as might be expected, if it were really to lead to a creation of

the Kṣatriya class. It is rather constantly the Brahmanas who are taught by

the Kṣatriyas. And this, what was something exceptional, was almost always

explicitly emphasised.175 At the same time, the achievement of the nobility

is acknowledged, and so to say, characterised as a peculiar exception which

proves the rule. Many more centuries had to pass till this exception itself

became the rule.

Beings Which Are Not Human Beings

The spiritual atmosphere depicted in the Upaniṣads would not have

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THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

99

appeared to be genuine if the dialogues in them were confined only to the

world of mundane reality among Brahmana men and women, pupils and

princes. The mundane and the supermundane, the nature and the world of

magic merge indiscernibly into one another for the thinkers of this period as

also for the masses. And, therefore, the sacred knowledge has its seat also in

the entities other than the human here as earlier in the Brāhmaṇa-texts (p. 6).

No less an important person than Prajāpati, the lord of creation, appears

among the teachers of the highest mysteries. Indra among the gods and

Virocana among the demons are his pupils.178 As a matter of fact, the author

of the Upaniṣads does not succeed, or he does not try what no Greek author

would have allowed to miss so easily: to gain corresponding effects by shifting

the scene to such a sublime surrounding and to make the gods speak in a

tone and say things which are just proper for gods. But what happens is that

everything runs quite in the mundane sphere: like in art where it was beyond

the scope of the older Indian plastic art to elevate the figures of god in their

divinity above the human figures. Prajāpati is no one else but just an ordinary

Brahmana and teacher. Indra is a clever pupil and Virocana a foolish pupil.

Unplanned grouping of these authors for figures to which they can attach

new thoughts can be easily seen. Here they hit upon the ancient gods, and

now they become a school-teacher, a pupil—a strange travesty—in the

atmosphere of a Brahmana-school. Elsewhere, the role of an initiate falls

upon a spirit (Gandharva). This Gandharva dwells in a possessed woman;

he speaks with the religious wanderers who come where the possessed woman

is residing. Again in another section, animals reveal secrets. A Bull talks to a

Brahmana-pupil who is faithfully protecting the herds of his teacher till the

four hundred cattles have increased to thousand and explains to him a

quarter knowledge of Brahmana: “The fire will reveal to you the next quarter”

—and after the fire the swan, after the swan the bird Madgu. The picture is

drawn with so few strokes that we can see the scene before our eyes, in the

shine of the Indian sunset glow, near the waters of Yamunā or Gaṅgā,

between fields and jungles. “When the day broke, he drove the cows further.

Where they arrived by evening, he lit the fire, penned in the cows, put into

the fire a log of wood. He went and sat to the west of the fire, facing the

east. The swan came flying towards him and spoke to him.”—Is it perhaps a rewriting of an old fairy-

tale in which the animals speak to a boy of so many other things, as it is

proper for a fairy-tale?177 But what now these teachers say again is nothing

different, nothing more direct, more profound and more savage than the

humdrum wisdom of the Brahmanic schools—

Portrayal of Emerging Thinkers

Let us look back from these fairy-tale portrayals once more to the human

personalities of the Upanisadic dialogues.

The men who first understood the Imperishable, the One, behind the

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fantastic maze of their conception of the world, are many. And this is completely consistent with the historical reality. Only later periods could produce peerless individual personalities like Buddha: like in other lands where the only son of the god came after a crowd of greater or smaller prophets. Perhaps the first one at the beginning of a development to such a peerlessness was Yājñavalkya, the absolute knower, the supreme.

These thinkers of the Upaniṣads are, on the whole, no ideal personalities. The human infirmities, with which the urge for knowledge and deliverance was surely mixed among many without any contradiction—here as elsewhere —are candidly, one can say, unknowingly, sketched. Even the tinge of dirt that is used to belong to Indian ascetism, is not forgotten. A great role is played, coming down from the primordial period, by diligent passion for a sportive achievement of intellectual tournies, for a possible effective show that one knows what others do not know. That word of Upaniṣad, that the small people are quarrelsome, while the gift of meditation is given to the great, is not quite properly heeded. One is a virtuoso, and wishes to be acknowledged as such. The inferior rival may feel ill. He encounters pure crude irony, uncouthness and hatred of good, old times. It is not enough that “his head falls off”: robbers must steal his bones (p. 97)—these unfortunate men believe to have nabbed something better! The vanquisher, however, now satisfied, takes over the honour beside the cows with gold hung on their horns. And should such wise man be unreceptive for such possession, the chance remains that he has more liking for a beautiful girl. Thus indeed these narrations do not convince that the new ideals have taken the possession of the whole man. But then again: how genuinely, the desire for knowledge of great mysteries: how with convincing power it is expressed in many a passage! How the dialogues between father and son, husband and wife, the wise and his disciple prince are so distinct from the shallowness of those battles of words! The face of the one who understands Brahman glows. The old man brings order to his house and wanders forth homeless from

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cerned here—at this time only grammatical research was diligently carried out—mixed their observations on sounds and sound-processes with mysticism and magic.178 The one who could pronounce vowels and occlusives, lent power to Indra and protected oneself against the god of death. Thus, there is a clear tinge of the magic in the disputations of the Upaniṣads. The dialectical successes and failures have their magic influence. The relatives of the one who takes part in such wordy duels shed tears and remember him as one remembers a dead person.179 For, the curses which the vanquisher pronounces upon the vanquished, are fulfilled. It is no surprise that the Brahmanas of the “earlier times” liked to keep little gold on themselves to put the opponent in mild mood in the case of need with respect to such curses. Magic harm is mutually threatened with the help of dangerous mystical powers. There is a talk about them in the dialogues. They are themselves there and lie in wait to interfere in ruining the chances of an uninformed and the cheeky. One who, instead of worshipping the Ātman, professes his faith in other entities which are in reality only an eye or a breath of the Ātman, must make his opponent say that he is endangering his own eye, his own breath: “You would have become blind, your breath would have left you, if you had not come to me (to learn the real worship)”. One who does not stop questioning at the right place, falls a victim to destruction, through which the eternal order avenges such an infringement. One can ask only questions like how the lower worlds are woven “warp and woof in higher and higher worlds”—till to the worlds of the Brahman. “ ‘In what alone are the worlds of Brahman woven warp and woof?’ Upon this he answers, ‘O Gārgī, do not ask too much lest your head should fall off. You are asking too much about a deity about which we are not to ask too much, O Gārgī!’ Thereupon Gārgī, Vacaknu's daughter, held her peace.”180

The image of the real dialectical qualities goes quite well with the sphere of magic into which the dialectics work.

Of course, there is a sharp contrast between the main person, the knower, on the one side—more a knower than a thinker—and the ignorant, the questioner on the other side. They may then ask now only in honest thirst for knowledge or with an aggressive intention. Or, they may be the so-called knowers whose ignorance is unmasked.

Now the process which produces knowledge and nullifies false knowledge, has mostly little progressed beyond the primitive embryonic stage. It is doubtlessly valid for the literary image of this process in the Upaniṣads because it must have been valid in life and reality of that age.

We do not have here between ignorance and knowledge a gradual ascension which follows an inner law, but a leap. The knower does not encourage the ignorant to find the clues in his own consciousness and in looking at things which lead to knowledge. The knowledge is simply thrown into his lap.181 The so-called knower expresses his opinion. No person would have cherished it seriously; it is just a springboard for a dialogue. He is outdone by an oracle-like utterance of his opponent whose superiority is self-evident for a devout listener. He must then remain silent or declare himself as a pupil of

Technique of the Dialogue

We get acquainted, after knowing the frame of the dialogues in which they are set and the persons appearing in them and progressing from outside to inside further, with art or the lack of it. This art makes use of this apparatus to let the thoughts and trends of thoughts be originated and developed.

It may be mentioned that it is the part and parcel of the character of the procedure of dialogue, whose mechanism we have to observe, that the procedure bears, in a certain way, the peculiarities of the magic process at the same time.

Historians on law have mentioned that legal procedure on an inferior level of culture is a sort of magic. Grammarians of the age with whom we are con-

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the vanquisher so far as the end is not clearly marked in which the head of

the vanquished falls off. It can indeed be quite clearly seen how difficult it is

for the masses of concepts we are dealing with to adapt themselves to a

more firmly and more minutely intervening treatment; this was already sugges-

ted above (p. 93) when we discussed the vague "formulas of worship".

There is too much of the old nightmare of phantoms emerging, disappearing,

constantly changing and fluttering in every breath of air. There is still too

much of that manner of looking at the nature where five pits of gods are

perceived in human heart, and in the ball of the sun, a golden man, golden

haired, golden beared, all gold till to the tips of the fingernails. How then to

expect there—as in the Brāhmaṇa-period—anything more than the beginn-

ings182 of argumentations, fragments and surrogates: similes, fantastic consi-

deration of some sort of peculiarities of the words, like the number of their

syllables or a play with the alliterations? There is no real argumentation here

what is submitted as argumentation, but it is in the instinctive inner certainty

which is at the background, powerful or dull, affirming readily both, what is

profound and what is superficial.

When we discussed above (p. 89f.) the Upaniṣads which contained, brief,

mostly irregular pieces of texts lined after one another, we had an opportunity

to remark—we are reminded of that here while considering the structure of

dialogues—that the beginnings of a planned structure of the trends of thoughts

were certainly not missing. We had referred to that discourse of Yājñavalkya

which discusses the dream-filled sleep, deep-sleep and death of the one not

redeemed after discussing the condition of man when awake, in order to

attain ultimate goal of entering the Brahman of the redeemed: at the same

time, a gradual progressing and working with a double contrast of a dream-

filled sleep and a deep-sleep, and dying of the one not redeemed and the one

who is redeemed. Elsewhere, a succession of several discussants competing in

a contest of knowledge is presented as a framework for the structure of masses

of ideas, used not without a certain skill. Or also a narration of questioner

to the knower on what was told to him before by another supposed knower,

through which the real knower can keep his advice ready: a scheme of presen-

tation quite similar later to that of the Buddhists.

King Aśvapati183 asks each of the six learned in scriptures who came to

him: "Whom do you worship as the Ātman?" One answers: As the sky. The

others: as the sun, —the wind, —the earth, —etc. The king replies to the one

who had named sky that the sky is only the head of the Ātman. The sun: only

the eye. The wind, the earth: only the breath, the feet. Thus the conclusion

becomes imminent: one should not worship Ātman as something originating

from outside, something separate from oneself, but as the centre of all, as

one's own Self.

It is similar in the great dialectics of Yājñavalkya with his nine oppo-

nents.184 A foundation of thoughts of lower order lays the basis for the doc-

trine of Brahman at which the whole thing is aimed. One begins with the

conditions of sacrifice and their secret meaning. One who has to stand the

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test of being a master of the highest knowledge shows also his mastery here

over its lesser forms. There it is a question of verses which the Hotar-priest

recites, and of the oblations offered by Adhvaryu, of wind and moon, of

inhaling and exhaling. The knowledgable listener is happy that this is only a

prelude. One comes soon closer to the goal. Death, the otherworld is alluded

to, and the power of Karman. Where has the progeny of Parikṣit gone? Also

now the big and the small is muddled up: god Indra as a falcon, the wind as

individuality and as totality, wind which wards off re-death. There flashes

the question of all questions: "Explain to me the Brahman, which is revealed

and not revealed, the Ātman who is within all." And in the mouth of the next

discussant, word for word, the same question: "Explain to me the Brahman

which is revealed and not revealed, the Ātman who is within all." How could

the whole emphasis in this question be felt more strongly than by such repeti-

tions? And now the movement of thought rises from the most different starting

points to the same peak. It raises to the Brahman from the earthly and the

heavenly worlds: each one of it is woven, warp and woof on a higher world:

up to the worlds of Brahman. One rises to the Brahman from elements and

cosmic entities, earth, water, wind, sun; the One dwells and rules in every-

thing: "that is your Ātman, the inner guide, the Immortal." One starts clim-

bing upwards from gods: their plurality leads to one god: "that is the Brah-

man, the 'yonder': so is he called." Then inbetween maze after maze—immor-

tality, women, truth, heaven's regions, all muddled with one another. But

the one sound drowns powerfully the other sounds. We hear again and again

the same words: Ātman is the only deliverance: "what is different from him,

that is sorrowful." And finally—the dialogue is elevated from prose to a poetic

form—comes the climax of the whole in Yājñavalkya's concluding words.

They show in hymnic tone the vision of the Supreme Being, surrounded by

indistinct ray of light:

"Brahman is knowledge, is bliss.

The final goal of the giver of offerings,

of him, too, who stands still and knows It."

Of course, it is not a fully developed art of composition, no intermingling of

form and contents out of inner compulsion. And who would expect to come

across it here? But plan and resolve is not completely missing, as also the

confirmation—although only piecemeal—of energy which raises what is

significant and what is decisive beyond all that is imminent.

It is true that the influence of this structure, in fact of the whole style of

the Upaniṣads, on the ancient listeners has to be fully distinguished from its

influence on us Europeans. Everything appears to us as quicksand, as a jingle

of words what fills the earlier sections of the dialogues just discussed and

their offshoots also reaching into its main portion. We Europeans unavoidably

feel, and every reader of the Upaniṣads knows this quite too well, that a

serious damage is done to lofty impressions by such chaos of the absurd. But

it should not be doubted that also these phantoms, as long as each one of them

stood before the mind of an Indian that can be easily touched, have appeared

significant and effective enough. That the eight sleuths are spellbound by

eight over-sleuths, that one wins everything that has breath with the help of

three verses recited at the sacrifice: this was for the ancients—even though

perhaps each time only for a moment—in fact a key to order and condition

of existence, to the activity of great world powers, together with valuable

instruction on how one should react to such an activity.

The colourful intermingling of such apparently absurd flashes of inspira-

tion with the concept of the Supreme Being reflects quite clearly the evolution

of the characteristic feature of the Indian thinking. It is profoundly different

from the corresponding occidental developments. The great new development

of the Brahman-speculation had grown as a very precocious fruit from the

confused conception of the world of the Brāhmaṇa-period which had retained

many thinking habits of the primordial belief in magic. This introduced, of

course, a new predominant factor in that conception of the world. But this

does not mean that a decisive purifying transformation of the conception, of

the whole manner in which it was conceived and reproduced, took place.

Even now, the world was conceived on the wide stretches as not different

from the one in the ancient style of magic or the style of the sacrificial symbo-

lism. And from these lower regions, the inadequacy and arbitrariness of the

forms crowding them got inevitably mixed up with the new spheres of thoughts

and their depiction. It can be said that the Upaniṣads still reveal their intimacy

with fasting and other rites by which the religious men who talked here were

accustomed to keeping themselves at the disposal of the sacred action. They

did not question much the course of things in nature or realities manifest in

the destiny of the human world. They came from a sacrificial place, from an

atmosphere of Fire-sacrifice and Soma-sacrifice.

The Nature of This Prose

All that was described here was predominantly written in prose. That is

but obvious. The purpose was afterall instruction, and the prose was the

natural form of instruction. The major Brāhmaṇas which preceded the Upani-

ṣads were also in prose form. It was not different later. After the period of

the older Upaniṣads, the Buddhistic community gave prose form to the brief

pointed fundamental sentences of their speculation on the world, to the four

"sacred truths" and to the whole mass of extensive discourses on the world-

suffering and deliverance. How could the Upaniṣads have had a different

form from the common when they stood on the line of development between

these two text-groups?

The prose of the Upaniṣads is, of course, not the lively prose of a real

spoken language with its alternation of light and shadow, with its sponteneity

and arbitrariness, moved by the impulse of the moment. It is rather a solemnly

measured prose of the Brāhmaṇa-texts from which the Upaniṣads grew.

Apart from the brief sentences of ritualistic formulas, this is the only prose

determined by the literary form that was known in this period. For the prose

of a political or a legal language was not known in India, and no one had yet

tried to work out narrative prose as a form of literature.185 Thus uninfluenced

by more easy art of language of a different nature, this prose forms sentences,

as if laid by a cord, like hieratic forms of an archaic sculpture, often not un-

complicated, but always precise and rigid. Everyone repeats one of the few

available patterns of structures, often the same words, scarcely varied, just

like those plastic figures in long rows appearing completely similar to one

another. It could be said that here again the mentality is felt in which speaking

includes the practice of magic. As if one is speaking of magic. Magic has its

definite, necessary form: thus the linguistic expression of a thought has its

appropriate form from nature. It was important to reproduce this form and

not model it according to one's free will. And, therefore, there are nowhere

abbreviations. Repetitions were not avoided. This may appear to the present

day reader as unnecessary, indeed, disturbing dead burden. Afterall, the

same happening is repeated even in the outside world, without it being made

shorter next day, because it had been there yesterday and today. Synonyms

were amply used. Every expression has the same right, like the other, to be

heard. If it were not given a chance, one would not be sure, whether one had

said everything that had to be said. Neither the speakers, nor the listeners

were in a great hurry, or they were impatient to force this relentless sluggish-

ness of progress. Poeple had unlimited time in the Brahmanic schools and in

the forest huts.

The influence exerted by the absence of script adds to all that. One who

writes and one who reads can write down and read with a light heart, what

also has a purely individual stamp and ephemeral significance in its content

and form. To compose a text in a script-less age means as good as claiming

that it will be learnt by heart in future and recited by a knower, one after the

other, in solemn and stylised intonation. Anything accidental, personal, does

not get an easy access to it. A regularity sets in on its own, giving support to

this prose. It similarly helps the memory of the learner, like the verse-measures

in verses.

It may be seen, for example, how one Upaniṣad expresses the idea that

perception is impossible where there is no duality of subject and object.188

"When he does not see, he is still seeing, although he does not see. For

there is no cessation of seeing of a seer, because of his imperishability. But

there is not a second thing other than himself and separate that he may see."

"When he does not smell, he is still smelling, although he does not smell.

For there is no cessation of the smelling of a smeller, because of his imperishabi-

lity. But there is not a second thing, other than himself and separate that he

may smell."

"When he does not taste, he is still tasting, although he does not taste. For

there is no cessation of the tasting for a taster, because of his imperishability.

But there is not a second thing, other than himself and separate that he may

taste."

These series of repetitions are not yet over. What is said of seeing, smelling

and tasting is further repeated each time with exactly the same wording for

speaking, hearing, thinking, touch and for understanding: then we have the

summing-up of the whole:

"Where there is the other, as it were, there the one might see the other,

the one might smell the other, the one might taste the other, the one might

speak to the other, the one might hear the other, the one might think the

other, the one might touch the other, the one might understand the other."187

Individual Catchwords

In a text like this, not only expatiation is perceived, but also remarkable

beginnings of a skill which understands to sketch correctly even less simple

figures of thought here and there. There is no expression which would corres-

pond to "an sich" in German (English "per se") or the contradiction between

the potential and the actual. But are not appropriate words found for the

condition of a seer and a hearer who is per se a seer and a hearer, but whose

seeing and hearing, however, does not become real for the want of an object?

Even if the technical treatment of the prose in the Upaniṣads is, as already

mentioned, essentially the same as in the Brāhmaṇas, the concepts in question

sweep away at times the language with such a strong force for achievements

not having their equal in the dry descriptions of the old sacrificial cult. Let us

think, say, of the pronouncement on the Highest Self which is attributed to

Śāṇḍilya (above p. 36): where do the texts of the sacrificial theology know

such a soaring flight of the prose to the heights of a hymn? How does he effuse

there a stream of spirited attributes surging around the majesty of Ātman?

In contrast with this ability of depicting the wealth of existence with the

wealth of language, we have, on the other hand, his ability of coining the

briefest phrase for the Highest. It is not seldom that we encounter obfuscations

on this way as in naming the Supreme Being—which can also be a meaning

of this word or riddle or magic—as jālān.188 But then again, the throw of dice

succeeds, the apt, decisive word revealing the whole depth of mystery in few

sounds flashes in the mind touched by emotion. Thus the Supreme Being is

called "No, no" when the negation is too audaciously apprehended as an

expression of being free from restrictions of every definiteness. Or when three

briefest words, each one in itself colourless, teach one to understand the same

Being in one's own person in wonderful simplicity and greatness: Tat tvam asi

"That you are." When it is seen that "No, no" is often repeated in the old

texts, or that conversation between the father and the son ends again and

again with that incomparable, penetrating "That you are, O Śvetaketu",

one gets the feeling that even the authors of the Upaniṣads were indeed destin-

ed to remain alive without fading from that age onwards through millenniums.

Similes

Which were the means employed now by the authors of the Upaniṣads to

break the monotony of their description and to embellish it?

In the first place, we have to speak of similes. They could be missing from

the Upaniṣads so little as they were missing from one of the masses of litera-

ture189 connected with them. Of course, they did not serve alone as an embel-

lishment for the proclamation of the Supreme Being. They were meant to

strengthen the convincing power of speech, to illustrate what was taken away

from perception. There was in them, it may be added, an encouragement to

the authors themselves. This contributed in stimulating and directing their

thoughts about the object illustrated by simile. Particularly in the climaxes

of the description, where it was all important to open a view into the other-

worldly order of things to the imagination of the listener, similes upon similes

were heaped one after the other. The similes speak of the human mind that

soon abides in the realm of waking, soon in the one of sleep, and then sub-

merging itself beyond the dream-sleep into the depths of the dreamlessness,

enjoys the pre-taste of the peace of the Supreme Being:190

"As a large fish moves along both banks of a river, the right and the left,

so does that person move along both these states, the state of sleeping and

the state of waking. And as a falcon or an eagle, after having roamed about

here in the air, becomes weary, folds its wings, and is borne down to its nest,

so does this person hasten to that state where, when asleep, he desires no

more desires and dreams no more dreams."

Similes describe the emergence of all existence and all knowledge from the

depth of the Supreme Being, at first thrice scarcely varying the same motif in

archaic constraint, then progressing to a new one:

"It it—as, when a drum is beaten, the sound cannot be seized externally

but the sound is seized, when the drum is seized or the beater of the drum—

"It is—as, when a conch-shell is blown, the sound cannot be seized exter-

nally, but the sound is seized, when the shell is seized or the blower of the

shell—

"It is—as, when a lute is played, the sound cannot be seized externally,

but the sound is seized, when the lute is seized or the player of the lute—191

"It is—as clouds of smoke proceed by themselves out of a lighted fire

kindled with damp fuel, thus, verily, O Maitreyī, has been breathed forth

from this great Being what we have as Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Sāmaveda, Athar-

vans and Aṅgiras, stories, histories of the primordial times, sciences, Upani-

ṣads,192 verses, aphorisms, explanations and commentaries. From it alone all

these were breathed forth."

And further in the same section shortly after that, also on the relationship

of the world-ground and the world:

"As a lump of salt when thrown into water, becomes dissolved into water,

and could not be taken out again, but wherever we taste, it is salty,—thus

verily, it is with this great Being, the endless, limitless, it is just a mass of

knowledge: it rises from these elements, and vanishes again in them."193

True stories, which can be expanded, although to a moderate length, as

in the Buddhistic texts or the New Testament, can scarcely be found in the

similes of the Upaniṣads. It was obviously unknown to the literary habits of

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

this age to let a mere simile grow to such a dimension or become completely

independent.194 Also the contents which were supposed to be explained by it

did not favour this. It was simply a question of deep, but very simple know-

ledge and also of the knower here, and the ignorant there. And thus, mostly

all dramatic action is strange to these similes, clash of volition and volition,

of effect and counter-effect. Rather, one is accustomed to discussing the fami-

liar behaviour of the creatures in nature, habits of animals and simple human

experiences. Thus these simple images do not lack in urgency and dedication.

Can conditions and processes of a mental world, of a spiritual life, be brought

more effectively closer to understanding and feeling than through similes?

We may recapitulate them here briefly: For merging of all things in Brahman,

the simile of rivers flowing towards east or west and becoming ocean. That

simile of salt dissolved in water that cannot be taken out, and yet every drop is

salty for the presence of the One in many. For the absorption of mind in

dreamless sleep, a comparison with the one who is embraced by a beloved

wife and who is not conscious of what is outside and what is inside. For igno-

ring the Brahman by a common man for learner’s finding his way, for the one

striving for Brahman, the similes here of the hidden gold-treasure beyond

which the ignorant goes again and again carelessly, and there of the man

who was misled with the eyes tied: and now the ribbon is taken away, and he

asks for the way home from village to village. For non-clinging of the evil

deed to the knower, the one who is redeemed, later so oft-repeated simile of

water that does not adhere to a lotus leaf. These similes do not claim to be

poetic, but they only explain the hidden, the spiritual, with the help of what

is obvious and natural. But a waft of poetry blows here artlessly, when the

thought sways like a pendulum between two concepts which so easily and

perfectly merge with one another: when from here, these images of nature

and human life point to the mysteries of the otherworld, and when from there

the incomprehensible stoops down to become visible by putting on the robe

Riddles

The form of the riddle is similar to that of the simile. Even the old Vedic

poetry, which obviously preserves here a trend originating from more distant

prehistoric period, liked to give and guess riddles.195 It can be understood

that the authors of the Upaniṣads showed a great preference for puzzling

obscure expressions and for the accuracy of the clever man who looked

through the mystery. This is in accordance with the prevalent philosophy and

mentality of the authors of the Upaniṣads. Prajāpati196 is teaching his progeny:

“One of the three classes of beings, he speaks

one syllable which can also be heard in the thunder: da. ‘Have you under-

stood it?’ ‘We have understood it’—and actually the first group understood

dāmyata, the second datta and the third dayadhvam (see p. 82 above). Real

riddles are, however, surprisingly very rare in the Upaniṣads. One of the few

109

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

which are there is the following: “One who knows a young animal together

with its dwelling place, its roofing, its paw, its rope: he wards off seven haters,

the hostile cousins.” To guess it, and to guess it, as the giver desires would

not have been certainly easy for the ancient Indian experts, and the real guess

was hardly anticipated. The Upaniṣad itself gives the solution: “Indeed, this

is a young animal: this wind in the middle. This is its dwelling place (it appears,

one points here to the body). This is its roof (one points to the head)”, etc.

Verses

The last device to be described here at the command of the authors of the

Upaniṣads was of much greater importance than this mode of setting playful

silly tricks of thoughts to a scene. This was the adaptation of verses into the

monotony of their prose to infuse them with intensified vivacity and beauty.

Even the older period knew to alternate prose with verses, that too, not

only in an artistic story. Even the didactic prose was used to pause its step for

a moment to leave some space for a verse.197 It summarised what was des-

cribed for memory as versus memorialis or confirmed its truth, emphasised its

meaning and peculiarity in a pointed expression. At times, one resorted to

the existing verses like those of the Rgveda. Elsewhere, it appears that these

verses were newly composed just to be inserted at an appropriate place.

The Upaniṣads proceeded in the same manner. At times, they gave a versi-

fied introduction of the description to be followed instead of inserting the

verses in between: the theme was introduced in the form of a verse. It was

then elaborated in prose-explanation of those verses. All that could hardly

be elevated to the sphere of real poetry; it remained mostly, like so many

other things in the Upaniṣads, caught at times in the web of bad pedantry.198

With such insignificant beginnings, one had trodden a way that led far-

ther. A single verse, or a small group of verses, could grow into longer series

of verses. They acquired in this way greater importance. But, above all, the

inspiration of imagination could become stronger and freer. Imageries could

embellish the simplicity of the trends of thoughts. The feeling roused by the

world of ideas opening up anew could look for its expression.

Verses within the oldest group of Upaniṣads appear rarely in this form

which was further developed. Only one Upaniṣad, the Iśā-Upaniṣad is almost

in verse-form. It consists only of short series of verses, but it has become

important for the history of development of the Upaniṣadic form for its

dropping the prose. Otherwise, a verse-measure which is significant for its

inner and outer form is found only once in the old Upaniṣads.199 It is in that

discourse of Yājñavalkya (p. 90f.) which proceeds from the description of an

awakened existence through intermediate conditions of dream-sleep and

deep-sleep to death and finally to Brahman. The verses are introduced where

there is a talk about the dream-sleep. “There are”, it is said in prose about

the creative power of mind in dream, “no carts, no yokes, no paths. But he

creates for himself carts, yokes and paths. There are no blessings, happiness

110

and joys. But he creates blessings, happiness and joys. There are no lakes,

no lotus-pools, no rivers. But he creates lakes, lotus-pools and rivers. For,

he is a creator. "On this", it is continued, "there are these verses":

"Striking down in sleep what is bodily,

Sleepless he looks down upon the sleeping senses,

Having assumed light, and returns to his place,

The golden spirit, the one swan."

"Guarding his low nest with the breath ;200

The immortal goes forth out of the nest.

He goes where'er he pleases—the immortal,

The golden spirit, the one swan."

"In the state of sleep going aloft and alow,

A god, he makes many forms for himself.

Now, as it were, enjoying pleasure with women,

Now, as it were, laughing, and even beholding fearful sights."

"One sees only his pleasure-garden;201

No one is able to see him at all."

But the section on the one who is redeemed and the Brahman in the same

discourse is most profusely embellished with verses. It is said at first:

"When all desires which once entered his heart are undone,

Then does the mortal become immortal, then he enters Brahman."

This is followed by a series of verses in changing verse-measures. They

explain the same theme and glorify the knower of these mysteries. We have

already mentioned some of them.202 It is further said:

"Verily, while we are here we may know this.

If you have known it not, great is the destruction.

Those who know this become immortal,

But others go in the realm of sorrow."

"That before which the year revolves with its days,

That the gods revere as the light of lights, as life immortal."

And at the end of the whole, still a single verse:

"This eternal greatness of a Brahmana

is not increased by fruits of work, nor diminished.

One should be familiar with it. By knowing it,

One is not stained by evil action."

Thus the poetry of Brahman, of this abandoning oneself to the otherworld

by turning oneself away from this world, moves on. One does not desire to

state the didactic contents. The rapture over the possession, which has been

bestowed upon the knower, the one deeply moved, cannot remain silent. It

propogates its own image and the splendour of Brahman. It talks about the

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

111

misery of the others from whom it has gone. There is very little order and

structure in the form. Repetitions are heaped. The language is simple, not

embellished. A more spirited word appears here and there, a more beautiful

figurative expression—spirit like the one swan,—an impressive repetitions of

attributes when it is said of the Highest Being:

"Free of dust, beyond space, firm, unborn the great Self."

Early stages of this poetry trace back to the Ṛgveda. The poetry itself

paves the way, on its part, for the poetry of the later Upaniṣads, then of

Buddhism and Jainism. If it is combined with the texts like Dhammapada or

the Suttanipāta of the Buddhists, then they get, as it can be understood, a

position of eminence in development of form and content, in wealth of expe-

rience in the undulations of the mental life and in impressive power of

eloquence. But let us not regard the bud to be inconsequential beside the

blossom. This applies to this poetry, as also to the old Upaniṣads.

IN RETROSPECT

Upaniṣads Between the Older and the Later Period

Let us glance once more at the masses of thoughts described so far to

emphasise a few of the predominant basic features briefly and more intensely

than it was possible in the discussion so far. We had necessarily to adhere

to many details in it. And let us try to determine the place all this would take

in further contexts.

In the distant past, a magician rose to the position of a priest in the course

of development. In the period of Upaniṣads, the magician-priest begins to

become a philosopher. Fantastic reflection on the part of the technician of

sacrifice adopts a new direction in which his confused and dull spiritual needs

get more and more purged. One starts looking for one reigning power of all

existence, its one root. Having forced one’s way to the centre with the help

of such knowledge, one intends to master the whole ambience with a single

stroke.

The Supreme Being and the World: Significance of Their Antithesis

The manner in which the ideas are carried out is still caught, on the one

hand, in old magic where "nine is one, and ten is none." But here and there,

the power and art of philosophical thinking begins to show its head from the

confusion: there can be consciousness where we have duality of the seer and

the seen, the knower and the known; but whom should the knower know in

the realm of the Supreme Being? An antithesis is revealed from the words

seer, hearer, knower, from the words seen, heard, known between the subject

and the object and begins to develop the wealth of its philosophical substance.

A similar illumination of the horizon, an emergence of philosophy from

priestly and magic spheres could have also happened in the occident, perhaps

112

in the field of druidism. If it had not been disturbed and destroyed by a foreign

super-power, then it would have reached the stage of experiencing a

corresponding development.

Thus the Supreme Being of the Upaniṣads is at the point of contact bet-

ween the two worlds. Here is an invincible grotesque imagination and an

abstraction seeking to free itself from it, their threads entangled into one

another. This abstraction casting away everything visible and perceivable,

every restriction and exactitude with a passionate energy, attaches its "No,

no" to the Supreme Being; it submerges it in a formless immensity. How

infinitely far beyond the wealth of Plato's realm of ideas related to art! But

when that "No, no" appears to have cleaned the table, traces and shadows

of old images are still left. Is the fantasy busy now in enlivening them again

to new forms, new informality? There the Super-existence has preserved

features which have come from the sacrificial wisdom. That is embodied in

the syllable Om. It allows itself to be controlled by bizarre and fierce skills

of Yoga, this inextricable mixture of philosophy and magic. It is transformed

into god Brahman and moves towards times in this form, to where it will

have four faces and will originate from a lotus flower. The Indian spirit

possessed the mystery to let the sublime void of a pure thought and colour-

fulness of such images appear at the same time on the horizon.

The conception of this Supreme Being juxtaposed at first this world with

the otherworld, or rather juxtaposed it categorically. The otherworld of the

Vedic faith had not been anything more than a mere extension of this world.

It offered either more enjoyments or more agonies. The Brahman itself had

started its career as this-worldly potential among similar ones, superior to

Kṣatra (p. 30), but yet in a fixed correlation with it. The one great power

which attracted to itself all virtues in this world and united them in itself

proved to be something like toto genere unique in the style and richness of

its existence: and as such, this power began now to lead its existence beyond

the world, by staying alone in its solitude, and above all, this existence was

unique and more significant than the existence within this world. That old

phrase lightly tossed up by a ṛgvedic poet and almost immediately forgotten,

about a quarter of the Highest which is all these beings, and the other three

quarters, on the other side, which are all the immortals in the heaven, acquired

now a completely profound meaning. But the fourth quarter had not dis-

appeared at all and got dissolved in mere illusion and appearance, to repeat

the utterances of an ancient poet. This world also got its reality with respect

to the otherworld, its plurality with respect to the unity. If one speaks offhand

of the "Supreme Being" of the Upaniṣads, one should not forget that this, if

taken exactly,—at least for the conception which is widely predominant in

the Upaniṣads—is not the only sat, but the only which is dominant, lasting

and valuable in all beings. The world of plurality remained always the "real",

although it was reserved only for the One to be the "real of the real". The

thinkers of this period had not yet applied their mind to consider and work

out the plurality to such an extent that it could be opposed to the unity as a

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

113

powerful antagonist, that it could be almost of equal birth, in a visual con-

trast, as it was later worked out by the Sāṁkhya-doctrine. But—notwith-

standing the fact that the origin of the world of plurality was traced back to

one act of creation of the One in the beginning of things—the opposition of

both the realms, of the forms of being, positive value of the One and the

negative value of the Many, was quite clearly present and had in itself the

power to get more and more decisively the control over the thinking. Every

antithesis within the world of plurality, like the one between happiness and

sorrow, faded before the antithesis between the imperishable One and the

perishable happiness as also sorrow. All goals appeared worthless beside

the only goal, the goal of deliverance.

It was already mentioned how the great antithesis, to which everything

boils down, needed in certain directions a further thorough examination.

It was reserved for the future. Let us further refer to the following. A conse-

quence that the subject of perception cannot become its object, that the

perceiver himself is unperceivable was drawn, as we have seen, from the

antithesis between the seer, the hearer and the perceiver and what is seen,

heard and perceived, thus in a word, between the perceiving subject and the

object of perception. One was there not far from detaching the subject

further from all the movements which are accomplished in the world of

objects and which are characteristic for this world, and denying the perceiver

the power to work and act. A consideration of another antithesis, which

obviously interested the thinking, was forcing its way just in that direction,

but this antithesis was only on its way of definitely meeting with the success:

the antithesis between becoming and being. It was obvious that this world

had only to be on the side of becoming, while the Absolute had to be on the

side of being as a sure port for the flight from death, for the need of rest from

the toils of metempsychosis. The thinkers of the Upaniṣads would certainly

not have thought of permitting some sort of movement of becoming, happen-

ing and acting to enter those highest regions, where there is no duality, and

hence no consciousness. They allowed, however, the Absolute to operate in

this world, in accordance with its pre-history, as an omnipotent creator and

ruler. Thus an involvement of the sat in becoming remained. Its elimination

had to appear more urgent, the more acutely critical the antithesis between

becoming and being grew. We shall consider later whether and how this task

was resolved.

In Relation to Kant and Christian Mysticism

An attempt was made to compare the doctrine of the Upaniṣads with those

of Kant and Schopenhauer.

I would like to connect, whatever appears to be said, with a remark made

recently on the philosophical side (Simmel): where I shall also have an

opportunity of making the motifs of the Upaniṣads emphasised in the begin-

ning of this section more precise. It is said that two attempts have been made

in principle to accomplish that with respect to which the philosophical

thinking as such has to be adapted. And it is to understand the being in its

whole entirety, to creat intelligibility for it so that the thinking mind is moved

by this entirety and answers to it. The one way is that of mysticism, and the

other, that of Kant. The mysticism, say, of Meister (Master) Eckhart, concentrates the entirety of the world at one point, i.e., God who "is neither this

nor that", but everything "one and ingenious within himself." But this One

is nothing but the innermost of our soul, and its last simple point of life, the

"spark" is one with the god and not only united. "My eye and god's eye is

one eye and one face." Submerging ourselves in that bottom of our own soul,

we reach the bottom of all existence, and we experience this directly as a

whole.

Kant's path goes in another direction. Here the basic idea is: the world

it is only an appearance in the Kantian sense.204 An idea altogether in the style

of another world, of another age, like, say, the ideas of Copernicus and Kepler

as against the original and fantastic observation of the starry sky in the Veda.

How could the trace of overleaping of so long distances of the spiritual

history be found in the Upaniṣads? One must refer, above all, to that word

of Yājñavalkya to Maitreyī:

but for love of the Self (ātman)—sons, wealth, worlds, gods, the All, are not

dear for their love, but for love of the Self. But does it really mean, as one

wont, that the Self as the subject of knowing, is bearer of this whole world

which has its reality only through that, and it is nothing without it? No there

is no talk at all about the process of cognizing, about the reality of the world

and about the connection of the reality to that process in Yājñavalkya's

dialogue. It is not asked whereby and in how far worlds and gods are, but for

whose sake they are dear to us. We love, Yājñavalkya says, really only our

self; all other love flows from this love and serves it: where confession to

self-love205 expressed actually in clear terms may be conceived as intensified

by the resonating thought that one's own self is a universal Self. Then it is

true, Yājñavalkya continues, when he goes from loving of self over to the

thinking of self, "One should verily see, hear, think, absorb oneself in it, O

Maitreyī; through seeing, hearing, knowing the Self, verily, is all this

(existence) known." Even in these sentences, it would be gratuitous to find

agreement with Kant. We have already discussed this dialogue above (p. 56).

The sage wants to say that all values are in the Self; all the wealth of life

emanates from the Self; thus all knowledge is included in the knowledge of

Self: an idea being, so to say, on another level than the posing of the problem

of epistemology, as the critique of pure reason.

Thus, after all this, the method of Kantian reflection which "has its

cardinal point in the idea of form" is far from the formlessness of this con-

ception of the world of ancient India. But then this Indian conception is

closely connected with that second basic trend of philosophising: with

mysticism. Its essence is: to decline to look forward to the form of the pheno-

mena beyond the absorption into a formless substance.

As in Eckhart, all observation and perception of all existence is rooted,

also in the Upaniṣdas, in one powerful foundation. It is merging of every

existence in the unity of divine being—in that universality, which Eckhart

calls, "Neither this nor that", "nothing", and Yājñavalkya calls the "No,

no". And further: like Eckhart's "uncreated light in the soul", the "spark",

the Ātman of the Upaniṣads is inherent in the soul as the innermost central

point, in which the universal being is revealed directly, which is the universal

being. That sentence of the Christian mysticism that my eye is the eye and

the face of the god, or that the soul and god are only one blessing, only one

empire, could be an Upaniṣadic sentence.

Notwithstanding all obvious distinction of colour and strokes of lines,

the Upaniṣads are more closely related thus to the thought-structures of the

great Christian mysticism than to Kant's critique of reason. One can add,

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

it is mainly Plotinus in antiquity; it is Sufism in Islam. In whatever direction

one may look, extensive, profound parallels are seen between all these forms

of mysticism and the Upaniṣads. And when Schopenhauer so strongly

emphasised with emotion the agreement of his own thinking with that of the

old Indian masters, it was not the disciple of Kant who was speaking but the

one who was influenced by mysticism.206

With that, we come to the motif in the Upaniṣads which gives a special

colour to the effort of the philosophical intellect which strives for unity of all

existence: the longing of mysticism for merging of one's own ego and that of

all-existence beyond perishableness and death. This longing infuses life in

the thinking of the Upaniṣads, gives it wings, as also on the other hand, offers

words to that worldless urge and enjoyment to reveal its inexpressible mystery.

The intellectual character of this mysticism, the strong emphasis on

knowledge, conforms with its Brahmanic-priestly origin. So also the self-

conscious way, how, beside the longing for extinction of the ego in the divinity,

the certitude of its being inherent in the ego, becomes constantly conspicuous.

Further, closely connected with it, is the conviction that only one's own

mental power, of cquurse needing the cooperation of a knower, leads to the

attainment of the goal, to the triumph over suffering and death.

It is not our purpose to examine here, how far these features which

characterise the Indian, oldest example of higher mysticism—besides these,

the explicit pessimistic view of this world may also be emphasised—recur

elsewhere. In no case, they can somehow hide the essential resemblance of

all examples with one another. Identity of the one distant in space and time

reaching across the earth which so often astonishes the observer of the most

inferior religious forms, recurs here once more on another level. For, coinci-

dences, the endless possibilities become here just unnecessary, the involvement

in thousand changing conditions of life which lead the religious practice

otherwise through such incalculable manifold path of development. The

difference of human languages makes room here for silence, which, if it has

to talk about its inner happiness, knows to reach for only few, almost un-

avoidable words, to celebrate its own merging with the one sat. It is, as if the

very foundation and ground on which the streams of religious and philo-

sophical development flow, is supposed to be so constructed that waters

coming from all sides have just to flow together here in one bed.

Brahmanahood and Śramaṇahood

The “Brahman” which becomes a ruler in the kingdom of thoughts,

bears at the outset, as the name suggests, a feature of Brahminism, of the

spirit of caste. But ultimately, it is in its nature to work towards the destruc-

tion of barriers, to point out forward to where the Buddhism would have its

place. As the speculation is building up a new all-surpassing stage about the

conception of the world, there comes up the class of Śramaṇa which was

higher and differently formed in the social life of the Upaniṣadic period,

117

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

away from the castes of the men of the world. Compared with it, the

Brahmanas also appear to be as involved in the worldly life as the other castes.

If the Śramaṇa is compared with the Brahmana-caste, one immediately

becomes aware of the historical progress. The practices of the Brahamanas

are rooted, one can say, in the characteristics of magic. The Śramaṇahood is

rooted in knowledge and mystic contemplation, or at least in its striving for

it: where the connection with magic is not severed with one blow, but it is

loosened. A Brahmana as such is born as a member of a family. Brahminism

is inherited in a family and limited to it. But one becomes Śramaṇa, on the

other hand, as an individual, by one's personal resolve. Thus the pathway

from a Brahmana to a Śramaṇa is a progress from an old bond to freedom.

But to a freedom, however, which was now advantageous only to the

chosen few. Those to whom this favour was not granted, or those who did

not have enough strength to acquire what was offered, i.e., the great masses,

the unintellectual men, find also now the sanctum of sanctums closed to them

as in the old order of things. Here the divine mercy which may take pity upon

the small and the helpless is ineffective. What is effective is one's own know-

ledge. In fact, the exclusive becomes stricter than before. Magical powers of

the Brahmanas could of course be utilised by those who themselves did not

possess them. But they had to pay price for it. But it is just the inner concep-

tion of the new period, on the other hand, which brings along the dictum that

knowledge and meditation alone can give salvation. It is only an accidental

side-effect, when the life of those who were redeemed, also enabled the one

standing outside, to acquire lower prize, the reward of good actions through

alms and service offered to them: an appendage of the doctrine of deliverance

not much emerging in the ancient sources, which was later cultivated with a

remarkable, albeit in many respects doubtful, preferences. But the peace and

glory of the Brahman itself does not illumine the life of a common man. Of

course, the whole life in the world was infused with Brahman. But just on

account of its involvement with the world, the suffering grew. One desires

to flee from this suffering. A participation in the realm of the Imperishable

is only there where every necessity of life has disappeared, except the one of

ending this life. Its consciousness, maturing in the period of the Upaniṣads,

became stronger and stronger, as now new generations took up the task of

thinking, to keep on studying the unfinished problems and finding answers

to them, to settle the contradictions, to unite all that was scattered into a

permanent correlation.

REFERENCES

1. As it is generally accepted, Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya Upaniṣad are

in the centre among the “older” Upaniṣads. They are preferred as the basis of the following

elucidation. There is no doubt that the Aitareya Up. is also a part of the earlier group,

perhaps also the Īśā Up., besides, Kena and Kauṣītaki Up.—it seems in the second line—

(compare on latter, Keith Ait. Ār. 41 note 2). Do also Taittirīya (Keith 45f.) and

Jaiminīya Up. Br. belong here? It is also possible, there are older and later parts in the same Upaniṣad. I cannot accept the view of Deussen that the Yājñavalkya dialogues of Brhad Ār. Up. are particularly old (Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 209, comp. Transactions of the Third Intern. Congress for the Hist. of Religions II, 20; yet see also Sechzig Upanishads 426f.). I think, this view is a part of his disputable basic philosophy in which the whole development of thought has gone helter skelter. I see in those dialogues rather a literary technique which is beyond the oldest stages.

2. More on it on p. 33f. Comp. also references 159 and 160.

3. Chāndogya Upaniṣad VII, 23-25 (the preceding quotation on unlimited desires: Aitareya Ār. II, 3, 3).

4. See my Religion des Veda 403 (The Religion of the Veda, Delhi 1988, p. 220).

5. Comp. F. Otto Schrader, Uber den Stand der indischen Philosophie zur Zeit Mahāvīras und Buddhas, 19f.

6. The beginnings of considerations like those pursued by the oldest Greek philosophy, tracing back the different creatures of nature to the same latent physical element contained in them, are also found in the Upaniṣads (comp. p. 24). Thus it is said: "It is just water solidified is this earth, the atmosphere, the sky, the mountains, gods and men, animals and birds, grass and trees, wild animals together with worms, flies and ants. All these are just water solidified. The relevant text (Chānd. Up. VII, 10), however, does not, therefore, understand water as the last cause of existence as Thales does.

7. The word appears to be related to the Irish bricht (magic, magic-mantra). Comp. Osthoff, Bezzenberger's Beiträge 24, 113ff. There must have been a noun brh closely connected with brahman and meaning the same in the pre-historic times, as we can infer from the names of the gods Brhaspati = Brahmanaspati ("Lord of brh resp. of brahman").

8. I think the view, one often comes across, that brahman also means "the holy position, the Brahmanas" is not, in any case, true of the older language. If we say today for example, "the whole nobility, the whole intellectual world had gathered", it could not have been expressed by the language of the Veda in the same fashion about brahman and kṣatra. If the connection between br. and kṣ. is considered, what is meant are, in fact, Brahmanas and the nobility. But both the potentialities consisting of their essence were discussed. Passages like the one in Aitareya Br. VII, 19, 3 are characteristic. "That is why, even now the sacrifice is based on the Brahman and on the Brahmanas"

9. I refer to Tiele-Söderblom, Kompendium der Religionsgesch. 24ff., Marett, Arch. f. Religionswiss. XII, 186ff., PreuB ibid. XIII, 427ff., Söderblom ibid. XVII, 1ff. and the beginnings of considerations like those pursued by the oldest Greek philosophy,

10. Compare the references to what follows in Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Philosophie I, 1, 257f.

11. The sacred verses collected in the Ṛgveda.

12. Deussen ibid. 262f. establishes here (Taitt. Br. III, 12, 9) the identity of Brahman with the Ātman (the great "Self"). I don't think that he has proved it. Of course a verse follows glorifying "the great all-permeating Ātman". But it appears to be of different origin and to have been combined to form a litany with the verses discussed above p. 32 only superficially.

13. A.H. Ewing (The Hindu Conception of the Functions of Breath II, 16f.) has very clearly expressed this difference between Prāṇa and Ātman.

14. These references are: Ṣat. Br. X, 6, 3 and Chānd. Up. III, 14.

15. The translator cannot render these epithets in their whole force. The German language is not as good as the Indian in forming compounds. We have therefore to use several words for one Indian word. This weakens it.

16. I think Eggeling's translation "Let him meditate upon the 'true Brahman' " does not reproduce the concept quite exactly.

17. Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 4, 5. Then Iśā Up. 5.

18. References in Deussen ibid. I, 2, 134; there p. 136 references concerning the beginning of the passage.

19. William Jones has already mentioned these words besides "No, no" of the Upaniṣad (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 10th Imp., 416f.).

20. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 8, 8. Then Iśā Up. 13.

21. Then the next verse is somewhat different. It promises victory over the death to the one who "knows birth and death both together". "Dying" comes there in the place of "not being born", a double affirmation in the place of a double negation. Is it the idea that dying also is transferred here to the all-compassing Brahman? In fact, "both together" appears to be suggesting that the preceding verse also explains the wording being born or not being born to be inadequate, because the Brahman comprises both in the same way and proves thereby that it is exalted over the two.

22. Ṣatapatha Brāhmaṇa XI, 2, 3.

23. Of the two offerings of the sprinkling-sacrifice introducing the sacrifice, one is dedicated to the mind and the other to the speech.

24. In the Ṛgveda. Compare my notes on this, III, 38, 7 (with the postscript); VII, 103, 6; X, 169, 2.

25. Chāndogya Up. VI, 2f.

26. Literal translation would be "sharpness". But "heat" is more apt for the idea in the mind of the composer. Compare how the same entity is described in Chānd. Up., VII, 11.

27. I don't think that it is obvious that "food" stands here in the place of earth (Oltramare 87 note 2), so that it would mean that one has to think somehow or other of this idea when that word is used. It may be seen how in Chānd. Up. VII, 9 the effects of "food" (there in any case, besides water and heat) are described.

28. It is clear that this does not correspond to what was said before according to which there should be more talk about the threefold elaboration each time of heat, water and food. It is possible that an older pattern is reproduced here in a confused manner. If the editor is said to have caused a confusion then it could as well have happened to the author Deussen's (Sechzig Upanishads 155) attempt based upon the Indian exegetic tradition to explain away difficulties is not convincing. I think, if we compare with Ch. Up. VI, 4, 7; 5, it will be disproved.

29. vācārambhaṇam. Sukhtankar (Wiener Zschr. f. Kunde d. Morg. XXII, 144f.) understands this word differently. I think, wrongly.

30. What is reproduced here is followed by one more explanation; how the three "deities", after entering the man split individually threefold. Thus the crudest becomes shit, the middle one flesh and the finest mind, etc., from the food.

31. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 7, 3ff. In the following: Ait Up. I, 3, 13; Ait Ār. II, 3, 2.

32. See the Section "The Deliverance".

33. Brhad Ār. Up. I, 4, 7. In the following: Chānd. Up. VI, 13. 11. 12; III, 14 (Parallel-edition of the reference mentioned on p. 35f. above).

34. The treatment of the question of space which is found in the expressions on the death of the one redeemed and entering the Brahman does not go further than what is expressed here (see the Section "The Deliverance").

35. What is said here comes closer to the discussion of Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Philos. I, 2, 137f. But is again different from it in its conviction that the conceptions of the Upaniṣads are to be associated with the primitivie ideas rather than with the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. I find my attempt of getting a certain vividness for the idea of existence "beyond the ākāśa" confirmed in what a later Upaniṣad says (Maitr. Up. VI, 15) of "timeless without part" (word-play: akālah "without part", akālah "timeless"). It precedes the "divisible" time beginning with the creation of the sun and divided according to year. This "timelessness" is not timeless in the strictest sense; it is chronologically prior to the time.

36. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 8, 9. Then Taitt. Up. II, 8.

37. The fathers are the souls of the departed. The ladder must be understood as having been used as an offering for the dead. In the following verse: Agni the Fire-god, Indra, the Storm-god.

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

38. Atharvaveda XI, 4, 21. Comp. Mahābhārata V, 45, 14.

39. Thus it is said in the following verse that it has produced the whole world with its

own half. I refer to the Section: The Absolute in Itself.

40. This is to be represented as the total view of the Upaniṣads. But again exclusion of

such restriction and preservation of the equilibrium between the positive and the negative

is to be noticed besides it. Comp. Brhad. Ār. Up. IV, 4, 5 (above p. 39).

41. Brhad Ār. Up. I, 4,

42. Word-play: "he let split" apātayat; "husband, wife" patih, patnī.

43. I am translating quite literally and letting the obvious unclarity become apparent.

"Thus arose the name creation" Deussen. "Hence he became the creation" Max Müller.

44. Deussen (Allg. Geschichte der Philos. I, 2, 179) opines that one could try to give to

this myth(?) a deeper meaning. The "male would be the will longing for its manifestation,

the female the epitome of forms (of the Platonic ideas). The forms though originating from

the will, are heterogeneous with respect to it. They flee from it till the creative will takes

possession of them to express its essence in all of them." Let us leave these monstrosities

of the old Brahmanic fantasies in their crudeness and genuineness. Here it is not the question

of "will" and Platonic ideas, but that of bull and cow, ass and she-ass.

45. It is felt that the contradictory thoughts just cited were not unknown to the author.

It almost appears to be a travesty of these thoughts when the Ātman afraid of himself

notices that he is indeed there all alone, i.e., there is no need for him to fear. Is perhaps here

the older form of the account of creation rewritten in which the primordial being was afraid

of its loneliness and hence created the world? But now that we have the story before us, it

is indeed strange that the Ātman dispels the first fear after confirming that there is no other

being and then creates himself another being. That he does "not feel well" in his loneliness

should perhaps help him to cross over the difficulty as far as it was possible.

46. In a later Upaniṣad: "Like the spider leaving (the thread) and entering."

47. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa X, 4, 2, 2ff.

48. Concepts discussed above on p. 32 may be called back to mind.

49. Taittirīya Up. III, 1.

50. Chānd. Up. VI, 9. 10. In the following: Brhad Ār. Up. I, 6, 3; II, 4, 6; I, 4, 10. 7.—In

fact, we should refer to all verses in which it is said that the Brahman is "everything".

51. The text certainly expresses the idea illustrated by similes to the extent that the

creatures are not aware of their entering the sat or emerging from it, although they enter

the sat and emerge from it. Can we not interpret what is shown above—perhaps beside that

meaning—clearly from the similes? Let us compare how in the Praśna Up. VI, 5 the simile

of rivers and the ocean is used for the merging of "name and form" in the imperishable

obtrusive tone of assertion.

52. Is it a mere chance that "if he sins, he is a Sāman", etc., is not added to these

sentences in accordance with the usual emphasis of the sacrificial sphere of the concept

(above p. 15)? Is not the withdrawal of the sphere evident here?

53. Comp. above p. 24 and see the index on the idea of "worship" appearing here.

54. It may be observed in how many different forms the relationship of the Ātman to the

world appears in the dialogue Br. Ār. Up. II, 4=IV, 5. Now he is things, now beings. Now

he is in the things. Now the things emanate from him. It is noted carefully how it happens

that he rules over the universe. What is important is that it has to signify something that he

rules over it. The conception about other things varies.

55. Thibaut, Sacred Book of the East XXXIV, p. CXX.

56. Is "breath" (prāṇa) used here in the sense of Ātman? This term was used shortly

before.

57. Brhad. Ār. Up. II, 1, 20.

58. Griswold (Brahman p. 50) says aptly with reference to the trends of thoughts:

"Reality presents itself as a thing of degrees".

59. My view here is contrary to the view of Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Philos. I, 2, 206ff.

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

("die Māyālehre in den Upanishads") and to what Prabhu Dutt Shāstrī says in The Doctrine

of Māyā (London 1911) which, I think, hardly promotes any research. On the other hand, I

support the view of Thibaut he has quite prudently substantiated in Sacred Books of the East

XXXIV, p. CXVIff. Oltramare, L’histoire des idées théosophiques dans l’Inde I, 88ff. avoids

an extreme point of view.

60. Of course, evidences of the later Upaniṣads are to be left out—perhaps it is not too

much to be reminded of that—from these considerations. Thus the famous verse of the

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad to be discussed later:

"The nature is illusion; the highest god is magician."

61. Brhad Ār. Up. II, 4, 14.

62. It was intended to conclude from the phrase "where there is duality, as it were" that

the plurality is explicitly only "as it were", i.e., it does not exist in reality. It is similar, when

it is said elsewhere of the Ātman, "he thinks, as it were, he wanders, as it were" etc. Yet

this tiva is commonly used by the authors, at first in our sense of "so to say". There is a sort

of an uncertainty about the phrase and therefore, it is not to be understood in too much

literal sense. Finally this "iva" shrinks almost to an unnoticeable nuance of restraint in using

an obtrusive tone of assertion.

63. Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 3. In the following: ibid., IV, 4, 18.

64. "Death of Death" is a comparative form of "death" like "breath of breath", etc. I

prefer the translation above (p. 56) to the possible "he desires death after death" on account

of this parallel.

65. Brhad Ār. Up. II, 5, 15. In the following; ibid., II, 4, 5.

66. So also the words preceding the reference cited last: "This Ātman is indeed the

supreme ruler of all creatures, king of all creatures." What precedes should be considered

before considering what follows.

67. Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Philosophie I, 2; see particularly pp. VI. 145. 149. 205. 358.

68. Brhad Ār. Up. II, 3. In the following: Taittirīya Up. II, 6 (comp. also Maitr. Up. VI,

3); Chāndogya Up. VIII, 3, 45. Brhad Ār. Up. V, 1.

69. An untranslatable pun. sat ("That which is") and tyam ("that", wrong form of the

correct tyat used for the sake of the pun) give together satyam ("the real"). Deussen

translates "that which is and the otherworldly". Probably, the authors had really that idea

in their mind. But tya is not "otherworldly" if the lexical meaning is taken into consideration.

70. See the preceding reference.

71. "Reality and Irreality", Deussen. I think, we should allow "the wrong" (or "the

untrue") what is clearly there to be left out. The Absolute assumed the form denoted by this

word while entering this world. Of course, an evidence of Māyā-doctrine cannot be found

in it. That it was a vogue to juxtapose the opposite pairs with one another contributed

to obviously the choice of the relevant expression.

72. It is in accordance with the style of the Upaniṣads that material expressions like

"living in the sun" (Taitt. Up. II, 8; III, 1, 10) were found for this yonder.

73. See my "Buddha" 6th ed., p. 355.

74. This train of thoughts mainly developed in the form of a dialogue between

Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī (above p. 55) was expressed in such a way that the Absolute

"elevated above the antithesis between the subject and the object" was "neither subject nor

object" (Simmel, Haupt-probleme der Philosophie 95). It was there, so to say, a symmetrical

figure; the Absolute had the same position at the two poles, he adds. I cannot accept this

formulation. The Ātman is subject and alone from the point of view finding its most

perfect expression in that dialogue. And it has no object in its solitude. So that the subject

as such does not take an active part for the want of an object.

75. Quite literally: only a lump of knowing.

76. Taittirīya Up. II, 5,

77. Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad I, 5f.; refer besides to Chānd. Up. VIII, 5.

78. See the Section on Deliverance.

79. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 8, 8f.; Then ibid., IV, 4, 22; Kaus. Up. III, 8.

80. Brahan (masculine) appears to mean the personal figure to which the Brahman

(neutr.) was attached.—Obviously, the lower, suffering re-births are also to be considered here along with the fortunate ones enumerated here. The author of this passage highlighted only the wanderings of those who did good works on earth.

81. Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 4, 3f. The text says literally, I think, “reaching ignorance” where the text is translated “sunken in unconsciousness”. I think rather that it is to be understood thus than with another: “it dispels its ignorance”—We may refer here to an astute essay of F.C. Schrader “Zum Ursprung der Lehre vom “Saṃsāra” (ZDMG. LXIV, 332ff.) referring partially to this passage. I think that his findings cannot be accepted.

82. Chānd. Up. VI, end of 8-10. There is hardly any talk about going into deep sleep and waking up from it in 9-10.

83. Material on god's' path and fathers' path: Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 301 ff.; comp. also Windisch, Buddha's Geburt 63ff. We get to know a bit of pre-history of this doctrine from Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa; comp. Oertel, JAOS. XIX, second half 111 ff. Windisch, Ber. Sächs. Ges. d. Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Kl., LIX, 111ff.—Then the next translated verse in the text: Brh. Ār. Up. VI, 2, 16. Comp. the important essay of T. Segerstedt “Süslavandringss-belief concerning moon relevant here.

84. According to the same text, man was born through fivefold “offerings”. The gods offered first the “belief” as their sacrificial fire in the heavenly world; Soma arose from it. They offered it in Parjanya (the god of rain) as their sacrificial fire; thus came rain. They sacrificed it in the world-ground; so the food was produced. They sacrificed it in man; so the seed was produced; this in woman; so the man was born from the woman. The “man-fire” and the “woman-fire” in our passage is based on the concept of relevant wanderings and transformations characteristic for the priestly tinge of these fantasies as a series of offerings. The “again”of the text above is explained from the same context; the being reaches again the stage of human existence. A parallel text speaks more clearly about the offering in man-fire and then in woman-fire: the souls fall down on the earth as rain and are born again as rice, barley, shrubs, trees, sesame and beans. Man eats them. They become his semen, and as such they are discharged by him.

85. The “stories of the (earlier) births” of the being attaining Buddhahood.

86. It may be noted how the same text (p. 64f. and Ref. 80) describing the repeated return of man to a new existences teaches, as far as the past is concerned, unprecedented origin, and not something coming from unforeseeable earlier transmigrations. An interpretation reading such transmigrations into the text instead of that origin for the sake of consequence, should be rejected.

87. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 2, 13.

88. From the point of view taken up by this dialogue, it is strange to meet Ātman as the only one with the other co-ordinated part of the human being. Obviously, we have here a careless expression, evident for a period when the terminology was still flexible. Deussen finds here a “view related to Buddhism, according to which only the work continues to exist and not Ātman”. I don't think that the passage conveys so much meaning. It is not said that only the work subsists, but that the work decides, where and how the man will continue to exist (Comp. Ait. Ār. II, 1, 3: I don't think that this vague passage deserves any attention).

89. He gets happy or unhappy life depending upon his deeds.

90. Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 4, 5. The following: Chānd. Up. V, 10, 7.

91. Cāndāla is a specially despised caste.

92. Comp. what is said on p. 17 above.

93. Thus Śankara later. See Deussen, System des Vedānta 346f. 428. Deussen's (Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 188f.) own Kantian treatment of the problem for the Upaniṣads is not convincing.

94. Yet see ref. 96 below.

95. Beginnings of such concepts are found indeed even in older periods. See above p. 19.

96. For, it is hardly a real attempt of solving this problem, when the Highest Being is associated with the power of Karman by an idea appearing occasionally that it makes the

man do good or evil deed depending upon whether he is to be blessed or humiliated (see above p. 46) so that god brings into effect what He wants in a round-about way through Karman.

97. Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 3, 33.

98. Thus literally liberator: deliverance from death.

99. The same conversation mentioned on p. 55 above.

100. Bhṛad Ār. Up. II, 4 (here translated according to this version) and IV, 5.

101. His second wife.

102. What is translated here as “the evil” appears again in the Buddhistic expression “Māra the evil” (p. 102) as “the evil”.

103. Brhad Ār. Up. I, 3, 28.

104. Ibid., III, 1. 3. Main portions of the following: III, 2, 10; IV, 3, 7; Chānd. Up. VII, 26, 2.

105. It is not different among the Jainas. See Uttarādhyayana XIX, 15 (SBE. XLV, 90).

106. Brhad Ār. Up. III, 8, 10. It is followed by Chānd. Up. VIII, 1, 6; 12.—“World sorrow”: Kāṭhaka Up. V, 11.

107. Above p. 26 f. There the passage is used to illustrate the atmosphere leading to a creation of the idea of the Supreme Being. It will be understood, in what sense I do not hesitate to quote again the same verse here in the description of devaluation of life in the world by contrasting it with that idea. It is a circular movement: a certain atmosphere gives direction to the thinking and the thinking taking this direction, strengthens that atmosphere.

108. I am reminded here of what is said by Simmel, Hauptprobleme der Philosophie 59.

109. Brhad Ār. Up. I, 4, 7. In the following: Chānd. Up. VIII, 1, 3; Brhad Ār. Up. IV, 4, 22; III, 4,5.

110. Chānd. Up. IV, 9.10.13; Brh. Ār. Up. II, 1, 20.

111. One of the two reviews containing this text (Śatapatha Br. XIV, 5, 1, 23) says while giving the simile of spider and thread and of fire and spark: “so also, from this Ātman emanate all powers of breath, all worlds, all gods, all beings and all those Ātmans.” Thus the plurality illustrated in the simile by the plurality of sparks refers explicitly to the Ātmans.

112. Śankara has, of course, a different opinion: “ 'A part' means 'so to say a part'. For, there can't be a part in the real sense for a being not having limbs.”

113. Literally: “not entirely”.

114. i.e., it obtains a corresponding rebirth—quite similar to this: p. 64f. above.

115. I speak here of its classical form.

116. The three “Guṇas” or constituents: light, bright—exciting, painful—rigid, gloomy.

117. I am referring, above all, to the role of austerity in Taittirīya Upaniṣad III.

118. The enumeration in Chānd. Up. II, 23, 1 amounts, at least approximately, to the triad of the operations mentioned. “There are three groups of duty. Sacrifice, study of the Vedas and offering is the first. Ascetism (tapas) is the second. A Brahmana-pupil living in the house of his teacher is the third—the one living permanently in the house of the teacher. All these attain worlds of happiness. One who is firm in Brahman, attains immortality.” I prefer to translate “groups of duty” to Oltramare's (Theophie I, 113) “gradations in the duty of religion”, I think, the word does not permit a gradation. (I agree thus with Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil. I, 2, 330).

119. Brh. Ār. Up. III, 8, 10. In the following: ibid., IV, 4, 12f.; Chānd. Up. VII, 1, 3; Brh. Ār. Up. I, 2, 9f.

120. The word pratibuddhaḥ (“he has awakened”) may be noted. It is a pre-taste of Buddhistic diction. Comp. my “Buddha” (6th ed.), p. 56.

121. One does not like to reckon over again the clumsy presentation that Brahman,

according to the wording, appears here to be in the process of becoming All, whereas it is in

reality All from eternity.

122. pratyabudhyata. Comp. note 121 above.

123. Of the old wise men and the authors of the Vedic hymns.

124. A verse of the Rgveda.

125. Quoted in the following: Brh. Ār. Up. III, 4, 2; 8, 11; IV, 5, 15.

126. The passage on Brahman that "knew-itself alone" just quoted may be noted.

127. Kena Up. 11; Kāṭhaka Up. VI, 12.

128. On Brahmaśutra III, 2, 17.

129. Do the beginnings of Yoga trace back to the times discussed here? Comp. p. 121f.

and below note 141.

130. Brhad. Ār. Up. IV, 4, 6.

131. They do not enter new existence

132. Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Philosophie I, 2, 310f. In the following quotation of

Gauḍapāda: Māṇḍukyakārikā IV, 98 (already quoted by Deussen, ibid.).

133. I cannot consider a passage like Chānd. Up. VIII, 3, 2 (Deussen, ibid., 311) as an

evidence. It is clearly seen how the difference between freedom and unfreedom (VIII, 1, 6;

the same context is treated as completely present and not as dreamt of "Untruth" covering

the "true desires" is not, say, a belief that the empirical individual beings exist, but that

they are independent of Ātman and cannot be reached, if one were to start from Ātman.

Yoga".

134. I shall refer to the discussion of the dialogue in the section on "The Beginnings of

135. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 4, 23. Then Chānd Up. III, 11, 3; VIII, 4, 1; IV, 14, 3; Brh. Ār. Up.

V, 2; IV, 4, 21; III, 5, 1; I, 4, 10; III, 5, 1.

136. Oltramare I, 135 mentions it aptly.

137. As the Ātman revealed in its own ego.

138. A parallel passage says, "Those who are leaving are leaving" (pravrājinaḥ ...

pravrajanti). Again an expression becoming technical in Buddhism. There it is a transition

from homely life to homeless asceticism that is named thus; see my "Buddha", 6th ed., p.

394. Even in the Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya talks to his wife Maitreyī with the intention of

"living (home)" (pravrajishyan).

139. The oldest evidence for śramaṇa is found in Brh. Ār. Up.; the word is used there

beside tāpasa (one who performs Tapas= "austerity"). An ascetic couple observing celibacy

speaks of its "exerting oneself till fatigue sets in" (śrāntam, śaśramāṇā) in the Rgveda

(I, 179): there the technical use of śram- was obviously in the process of being developed,

even though the leading thoughts of Śramaṇahood belong, of course, to the future.

140. Chānd. Up. VII, 6, 1. In the following: Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 3, 19f.; II, 1, 19.

141. Thus one speaks of the magical power of inhaling and exhaling and bringing all organs

to rest in Ātman (Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 113. 345. Comp. also p. 71f. above;

the last sentence of Chānd. Up. in question here could easily be, in any case, an addition).

Phenomena of "Puruṣa in the right eye" said to be the essence of the unformed, of "tyam"

(note 69 above), mentioned later in the presentation above, are described in a passage of

Brh. Ār. Up. (II, 3, 6). Comparison with Śvetāśv. Up. II, 11 speaks for visionary hallucina-

tions in ecstasy.—The next passage about the birth of the sun in Chānd. Up. III, 19.

142. Oltramare I, 136. Then: Chānd. Up. VIII, 11.

143. Particulars of the passage (from Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad) were already mentioned above.

144. Oltramare VIII, 2.

145. "Here they even pull together" adds another version of the text.

146. "But this boneless, incorporeal Self (ātman) with masses of knowledge is only

Brahman, only world", it is said in another version.

147. Oltramare VIII, 6, 1. Then Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 8, 4; Chānd. Up. VIII, 6, 5; Brh. Ār. Up.

VI, 2, 15; IV, 5, 13.—Variations of ideas found in Jaimintya Upaniṣad Br. III, 28 (Oertel

JAOS. XVI, 188) may be taken into consideration. Interpretation of reaching the Brahman-

world as going up and down between the sun and the moon; feasibility for the one who

reached there to be born again on earth in the family and race he wants to be born again

and going up again into heaven. A teacher remarks about this: "Who will give that up (the

otherworldly existence) and return hither? He would remain there!"

148. Let us be reminded here of the idea mentioned above (note 72) according to which

Brahman lives in the sun.

149. The sentence following the comparison of salt dissolving in water saying that the

Ātman "rises from these elements and vanishes again in them; there is no consciousness

after death" is rather unexpected at the point of dialogue between Yājñavalkya and

Maitreyī just mentioned (Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 5, 13). It is quite certain that it cannot be imagined

that the Ātman perishes. What is meant is that Ātman also vanishes with the departing of

elements animated by it in so far that it partakes of limited, conscious existence while abiding

in them (Kauṣ. Up. II, 13 is akin to it). Yājñavalkya does not express it sufficiently clearly

at this point of the dialogue, does not add the indispensable restriction to its words. For,

only fear is to be instilled in the mind of Maitreyī. It serves as a foil to the proclamation of

the highest peace that follows.

150. Chānd. Up. VIII, 11f.

151. "Alms-giver" attribute of Indra.

152. Not to usual dreams. We have mentioned them in the section Death of the One who

is redeemed.

153. Muṇḍaka Up. III, 2, 8.

154. I am saying: were attributed to the Āraṇyakas and not denoted as Ār. For there

were also forest-parts of the liturgic texts (Samhitās) in the Āraṇyaka collections beside

these forest-sections of the Brāhmaṇas.

155. See Macdonell-Keith's Index under Vamśa (Jaim. Up. Br. III, 40ff.; IV, 16f. also to

be included in the quotations)—The purpose of these lists was primarily to guarantee the

significance and authenticity of the relevant doctrines. At the same time, their divine origin

and uninterrupted tradition was indicated. But it is interesting to know that once (Brh. Ār.

Up. VI, 3, 6) the recitation of the lists of those who taught earlier the relevant magic appears

as a part of the ritual itself in the magic-like duty. Obviously, the power and reliability of the

relevant magic accumulated from these occurrences is shown thus, so to say, in its present

practice.

156. It is very clearly seen in Brhad Āraṇyaka Up. I, 3.

157. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 3, 4.

158. I am thinking of Sāmaññaphala Sutta.

159. See literatures mentioned in Macdonell-Keith Vedic Index s.v. on the literal meaning

of Upaniṣad. To be added to this: Aitareya Ār. 239; Senart, Florilegium M. de Gougé

575ff. K.E. Neumann, Reden Gotamo Buddhos aus der Läng. Sammlung II, 497 is of no

help.—Then the passage quoted on Tārakṣa: Ait. Ār. III, 1, 6. See Chānd. Up. III, 5 on the

"essences of the essences".

160. "Let one worship" means upāsīta; upās- (upa-ās-) is synonymous with upa-ni-ṣad-.

If these expressions, in accordance with their lexical meaning, suggest sitting (ās-, sad-)

(while worshipping) and not standing (upa-sthā, comp. p. 23 above), it is because sitting

is a natural posture for the one who is thinking of mystic secrets (comp. Brahmaśutra IV, I,

7 and Śaṅkara on St.; one must also think of the yogin in a sitting position. However,

Brh. Ār. Up. V, 14, 7 also shows that a corresponding expression is permissible which

includes standing, if taken literally.

161. For the power inherent in water is transformed into the plants. They grow where

there is water. The powerful ingredients of plants metamorphose as food in the body of

man.

162. Deussen translates "transcendent". So also Brh. Ār. Up. III, 4, 1 "Brahman which

is immanent, not transcendent"—although the word of the original is different; in reality

what is there is: "the Brahman is what is visible and not visible" One should abstain from

letting alien trends of thoughts play into a simple old text by arbitrarily introducing catch-

words of modern philosophy.

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163. Upanisad ("worship") here falls back clearly upon upāsīta ("Let one worship")

which is there at the beginning.

164. The liturgical texts of "worship" (Chānd. Up. I, II) described in the sphere of the

Sāmaveda constitute the starting point and the basis for the Ātman-philosophy of Chānd.

Up. as seen in the Yajurveda how the corresponding liturgic speculations on the fire-altar

in the tenth book of Satapatha Brāhmana (e.g., X, 4, 5, 1: "Now the instructions of the

Upaniṣads. Vāyu is Agni [i.e., the fire-altar]: so the Śākāyanin do their worship" etc.—X,

5, 1, 1: "Upaniṣad of this Agni is indeed 'speech', etc.) end up finally in the words of

Śāndilya on the Supreme Being (X, 6, 3) and thus reach the stage of the Upaniṣads in the

usual sense of the word. Refer particularly to Aitareya Āranyaka III and Śāñkhāyana Ār.

VIII for the literature of the Rgveda. I don't think that Keith (Ait. Ār. p.17.44) has proved

that "the philosophical view is more advanced than that of the Upaniṣad proper" in Ait.

Ār. III.

165. Chānd. Up. III, 11, 3. In the following: ibid., V, 11ff.; Brh. Ār. Up. I, 4, 7; IV, 1, 2;

II, 1, 20; 3, 6.

166. I cannot follow Senart (Florilège Mechior de Vogüé 575ff.) when he directly

ascribes the meaning "know" to the word upās- in the Upaniṣads. It is quite clear to me

that we have absolutely to adhere to the word "worship". But it is also true that worship

of a mystical element in one form or the other comprises knowledge as a decisive factor,

and on the other hand, knowledge merges inevitably into worship where it concerns objects

of such type.

167. Chānd. Up. IV, 9, 3. Then ibid., VI, 14.

168. ibid., V, 11. In the following: ibid., IV, 3,4. Brh. Ār. Up. VI, 2; Chānd. Up. VI, 1, 2;

Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 5; Chānd. Up. I, 10f.; IV, 1,2; Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 1f.; III, 1.

169. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XI, 6, 3) mentions this sacrifice (Brh. Ār. Up. III, 1) and also

reproduces the relevant conversation so that Yājñavalkya is confronted by only one

opponent of the nine appearing in the Upaniṣad, and the disputation does not cross the

sphere of the symbolism of the Brāhmaṇa. The close connection of the Upaniṣad with the

older scheme of presentation and at the same time, its further development is clearly visible

here.

170. Two tribes of North-West India (region of Delhi), while the Vedehas ruled by Janaka

lived further South-West, downstream along the Gangā (region north of Patna). During the

period of Kurus and Pañcālas, the home of the Brahmanic sacrificial science had spread

from there to the Videhas.

171. Brh. Ār. Up. II, 1.

172. R. Garbe in his essay "Die Weisheit des Brahmanen oder des Kriegers" (Beiträge

zur indischen Kulturgeschichte, p. 23). Here the opinion in question has been represented

most emphatically and most impressively.

173. This need not have been the first beginnings of intrusion of the nobility into the

priestly knowledge. It may be noted how in Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XI, 6, 2) a king—he is

no one else but Janaka—explains, as a profound knower, the secret meaning of Agnihotra

(Fire-sacrifice) to Yājñavalkya.

174. Should the name of Krṣṇa be mentioned as the third in this context (with Garbe)?

I have my doubts.

175. So also in the conversation on Agnihotra mentioned above (note 173) where

Yājñavalkya disapproves the idea of a disputation of the Brahmanas with the king: "We

are, after all, Brahmanas, and he is of a royal rank. If we vanquish him, to whom shall we

say that we have vanquished him? If he, however, defeats us, people will say, 'a king has

defeated the Brahmanas'. " The section ends quite characteristically. Yājñavalkya grants a

wish to Janaka as a gratitude for the instructions he received. The king desires that he should

be allowed to ask Yājñavalkya a doubt whenever he liked. "Janaka became Brahman from

then on." Thus the same author who allows a king here to instruct a Brahmana, finally

assigns the role of the real answerer to a Brahmana and lets the king who has learnt the art

of disputation be elevated to the status of a Brahmana.

176. Chānd. Up. VIII, 7ff. In the following: ibid., IV, 4ff.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE OLDER UPANIṢADS

127

177. One may compare how in the Brāhmaṇa texts the old myth of fetching of Soma by

the egle is transformed into an equally popular and absurd story of its fetching with the

help of the verse-measure Gāyatrī (comp. p. 10 above).—We may point out here to the story

of several Upaniṣads of the quarrel of organs over the superiority: this is also an

adaptation of a fairy tale.

178. It is sufficient to refer to Chānd. Up. II, 22, Ait. Ār. III.

179. Jaim. Up. Br. III, 8. The parallel-passages Sat. Br. XI, 4, 1, 1 and Gop. Br. I, 3, 6

concerning the piece of gold and which have to be considered with reference to each other,

I think, are to be understood in the sense what is said in the text. Eggeling SBE. XLIV, 51

has a different opinion. Comp. also Geldner Ved. Stud. II, 185.

180. Brh. Ār. Up. III, 6.

181. I have mentioned this in note 182 below. This case appears to me to be an exception.

182. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 3, 23ff. (p. 135) may be emphasised in which one can speak of a

progressive success.—Instructions of Prajāpati given to Indra deserve to be emphasised

among the beginnings of the art of dialogue and dialectics (Chānd. UP. VIII, 7 ff.).

There is, in fact, someting of imperfect instruction, becoming progressively perfect, of

doubts and objections of the pupil urging the teacher forward, although it is somewhat

clumsy and failing completely at the end of the whole (p. 99).

183. Chānd. Up. V, 12ff.

184. Brh. Ār. Up. III, 1ff.; comp. above p. 97f.

185. An artistic—or rather a partially artistic story in prose interspersed with verses.

Only the verses have a definite wording. Every story-teller gives the prose garb improvising

it with his own words.

186. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 3, 23ff. Comp. p. 55 above for the contents. It may be remembered

that the same tendency of repetitions has been maintained unchanged also in the historical

prose of ancient Buddhism. Comp. my "Buddha", 6th ed., 204ff.

187. See p. 55 above for another version of the same passage. The two belong to the

different collections of texts combined later into one Upaniṣad. (comp. p. 89f. above).

188. Not tajjalān. Böhtlingk, Ber. Sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1896, 159f.; 1897, 83 judges

obviously aptly. The counter-remark of Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 164 is off

target.—Hopkins Journ. Am. Or. Soc. XXII, 362 tries to interpret the mysterious expression

tadvanam (Kena Up. 31).

189. Among them, the canonical literature of the Buddhists may be prominently mention-

ed. I think, I shall deserve gratitude of many, if I mention in this connection the significant,

nice essay of Mrs. Rhys Davids: Buddhist Parables and Similes. (The Open Court, Chicago,

Sept. 1908).

190. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 18f. Then ibid., II, 4, 7f.

191. The threefold simile is at first to be understood in such a way that the Supreme

Being is compared with an instrument producing tunes. But the world-creatures are com-

pared with the tunes. The next simile of fire and smoke suits perfectly. Then the next simile

(see p. 107 above) of salt and water may point out to another version of the first three-fold

simile. Salt which cannot be got on its own depends upon another tangible entity (water).

It corresponds to the Supreme Being and the water to concrete things. Should then not the

tunes which cannot be grasped be understood as the Supreme Being, and the drum, conch-

shell and the lute as creatures? I think, it is possible that there is intermingling of different

point of views. The correspondence between things presented (world-ground and world)

and the images (instrument and tunes) presenting them is established once in one way, and

at the other time, in another way. This depends upon the correlation between the one that

produces and the one that is produced, between the one that is tangible and the one that

is not.

192. What is probably meant here are the instructions about the form of worship of the

Highest Being. They have given the name to our texts, and not these texts themselves.

193. In another text (Chānd. Up. VI, 13), this same simile is transformed into a formal

statement. The teacher asks a pupil to put salt into water and return with it the next day.

"Give me the salt." It is not there. "Take a sip from water." It is salty. Although it (the

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

Imperishable) is here, you do not perceive it, my dear. But it is here." Similar improvisation

of similes is also found among the Buddhists.

194. The simile of a man sent away from home, but returning there is almost like a short

story (Chānd. Up. VI, 14, comp. p. 94f. above). But it may be noted that it is not told in a

narrative form: "Once upon a time it happened that a man with his eyes bound was led

astray from the land of the Gandhāra", etc., but without changing the comparative form:

"Just like a man ... might be led away" etc. But then in the subsequent sections without

"just like": "Relatives sit around a sick man" etc., and: "They bring hither a man taken by

hand" etc. But they are not really similes. What is done is that the work of the Supreme

Being is seen in the relevant situations without a simile (Deussen's attempt to interpret the

passage of the chained thief as a simile, in agreement with Śankara, in Sechzig Upan. 159

has failed). When in these sections and the similes in their proximity, the same final sentence

is repeated then what is heterogeneous is treated as homogeneous.

195. I am referring to my "Literatur des alten Indiens" p. 24f.

196. Brh. Ār. Up. V, 2; then ibid., II, 1.

197. It is seen clearly in Ait. Br. V, 30 how the verses in the stories and the didactic verses

are seen as something similar. Two verses are quoted in this in the same line about the

significance of certain rites of sacrifice and then a narrative verse from the famous story of

the lotus-thief (comp. my remarks, Nach. Gött. Ges. der Wiss. 1911, 464 note 2 on this).

198. The verses of Chānd. Up. VII, 26, 2 on the onlooker whôse limited life was extended

to a many-sided fulfilment:

"He is onefold and threefold, also fivefold.

Sevenfold he is and also ninefold, he is also known as elevenfold,

And hundred-and-eleven-fold, and also twenty-thousand-fold."

199. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 3, 10 f. Then IV, 4, 7ff.

200. In the body of the one who is sleeping. Spirit has left him, but breath and life have

stayed back.

201. What is meant is body.

202. See pp. 48ff., 56, 77.

203. Simmel, Hauptprobleme der Philosophie 13f.

204. I am expressing in this sentence and the subsequent remarks my point of view on the

opinions of Deussen, Vedānta und Platonismus im Licht der Kantischen Philosophie p. 11,

his Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 208ff., Sechzig Upanishads 415; Oltramare I, 89 (see also

137 note 1); Prabhu Dutt Shāstrī, The Doctrine of Māyā 63. Kauṣ. Up. III, 8; Ait. Up.

III, 1 are to be considered, above all, from among the Upaniṣads not discussed in the text

(Brh. Ār. Up. II, 4, 5). I think, the question there is, on the one hand, of the assertion of

unity, it can even be said, of the involvement of organs of senses and objects, substance of

thinking and what is thought. ("These ten elements of being are dependent on intelligence

and the ten elements of intelligence are dependent upon the being. For if there were no

elements of being, there would, also be no elements of intelligence, and if there were no

elements of intelligence, there would also be no elements of being." Kauṣ Up.) We are

here not far from the style of daydreaming which we come across in the history of creation

given in Ait. Up. Ātman brooded the man it has fetched from water. There his eyes were

separated out, from the eyes, the sight, from the sight, the sun. Also hearing from the ears,

from the hearing, the world-regions, etc., etc. But when everything is attributed to the

basic power, Ātman, in the passages quoted above—it may then be named "breath"

(prāṇa), "intelligence" (prajñāna), "intelligential Self" (prajñātman) and "Brahman"—it is

nothing but the traditional assertion of mystic centrality of Ātman: it is the knower of all,

it causes all, it makes everything go, it feels the sexual desire: everything is connected

with it in a mystic bond; it rules over everything; "it is joy, it does not become old, it is immortal"

(Kauṣ. Up.) Too much respect is given here to the ancient thinking reproduced here in

these sentences, or it is also distorted, if one were to find in it a concept of the theory of

perception and says that "the phenomena of the material world get resolved into processes

which are exclusively intellectual and subjective" and that "the objects of knowledge exist

only as far as they are recognised by Ātman" (Oltramare). I shall be failing in my duty, if

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I were not to refer to the Indian scholar V.A. Sukhtankar, Wiener Zschr. f.d. Kunde des

Morgenl. XXII (1908), 134 note 1 in this cōntext.

205. It is significant that the decisive expressions of the passage in question coincide almost

literally with those of a Buddhistic dialogue where a king asks his queen and the queen the

king, "Do you like something better than your self?" In both the cases, the answer is in the

negative. Samyutta Nikāya vol. I, 75.

206. I have expressed my view in my essay "Die indische Philosophie" (Kultur der Gegen-

wart, 2nd. ed. I, 5, 54f.) on Schopenhauer's opinion about the Upaniṣads. But there the

doctrine of the Upaniṣads was not the only one from the Indian to be taken into considera-

tion.

CHAPTER II

THE LATER UPANIṢADS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀṂKHYA AND YOGA

The Later Upaniṣads

We were discussing so far the first group of the Upaniṣads. They are followed by the second. These texts, in accordance with the progressive development, are different from one another. They reveal a strongly pronounced individuality. Of course, certain common features of their literary character are evident. Their connection with the type we got to know in the older group of texts is clearly evident, so also at the same time, the process of their differentiation from one another. Their form of presentation gets more and more estranged from the style in the old Brāhmaṇa-texts. The authors get more and more accustomed to creating comparatively larger compositions. These are dedicated to the elucidation of a particular problem, and correspondingly, they are governed by homogeneity. The contents of these texts presuppose, as this can be found from the ensuing description, a clear idea of what is to follow. They also reveal the ability of the thought to keep together various threads and to keep them apart. In spite of all this, these Upaniṣads are not far behind their predecessors in their untiring preference for repetitions, for constant assertions, although very little is proved by them, and for erratic abruptness and sudden change of tone. Even now the need is felt that the thought-content is not to be given, or rather not only to be given, in bare abstract expressions. The authors wanted to emphasise what is beautiful, sublime and frightful in knowledge, create impressions, make hope and fear speak, grasp the whole man and transform him. These tendencies find a freer way in their growing independence from the Brāhmaṇa-style. Thus compared with the preceding period, poetry becomes more prominent than prose. In place of the brief philosophical hymns of the Veda, the series of verses interspersed with the prose we found in the old Upaniṣads, we have now quite often didactic poems.

The verses in these Upaniṣads are often carelessly composed. But at least in a text like Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad, many an unforgettable word, many a profound imagery, is a testimony that the language used here comes from the very bottom of the heart.

Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad. The Naciketas-Dialogue

Of the individual Upaniṣads demanding a special emphasis and portrayal of their distinctive mark, Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad mentioned just above is the

oldest and by far the most significant. A trace of Vedic style of thinking and

diction is clearly marked here.2 The Upaniṣad is based upon a Brāhmaṇa-

reference. This teaches a workmanlike erection of the fire-altar which brings

the highest otherworldly reward. The initial sentences of this Brāhmaṇa-text

are borrowed in this Upaniṣad as its introduction without any change:

"Uśant, the son of Vājaśravas, surrendered all that he possessed.3 He had a

son, Naciketas by name. When the presents were being given, faith entered

into the heart of Naciketas who was still a boy.4 He said, 'Father to whom

will you give me?' (And he said it) a second and a third time. The other

replied (angrily), 'I shall give you unto Death'." Both texts then narrate

how the boy goes down to the kingdom of Death where the god of the

departed grants him three wishes. But how the plain language of the Brāhmaṇa

is transformed and made profound in the Upaniṣad! In place of the dull

information about the rites, we have here a moving description of an un-

conquerable desire in the soul of the boy for the most profound knowledge

that is to free him from death. From those first sentences, the Upaniṣad soon

moves over smoothly to a poetic form. The most decisive of the three wishes

is the third, the greatest. The boy speaks to the god:

"Shrouded in doubt is the fate of the departed:

They exist, says this. They exist not, says the other.

I want to know that. This you should teach me.

This is the third wish, I choose for this boon."

The Death hesitates to disclose what the gods themselves have tried to

find in vain. But Naciketas cannot be so easily sent away:

"No other it is, as you tell me.

No other wish, I choose for this boon."

Now the god offers him all pleasures of the world, riches, long life.

Naciketas unflinchingly stands his ground:

"No riches may give the man enough:

What is the use of possession when we behold you?

We shall live, as long as you permit us to live,

But that remains the only wish I choose.

Knowing fully an existence free from old age and death,

The ageing, the mortal here below:

Would he like to enjoy a very long life,

Craving for gay happiness, pleasure and delights?"

We can perhaps compare the situation of that earlier dialogue (above

p. 91), where Yājñavalkya hesitates to reveal to his royal listener the last

word on mystery of deliverance. "From now on tell me only what serves

deliverance", says the king again and again. But in place of the heiratic

rigidity of that text, what a life and what a greatness-a presentiment of

Buddhistic greatness-in the portrayal of Naciketas who gives up happiness

and glory without thinking, to wrest from god the highest good, the know-

ledge that leads one beyond old age and death. Finally, god's resistance is

conquered:

"Yours is this knowledge. Firmly have you stood your ground.

May questioners like you, O youth, be found."

Now the dialogue ends up in a didactic poem. The god of Death speaks of

an imperishable seer who stays bodiless in bodies, persists in what does not

persist looking into his own heart:

"One who has seen this, escapes the revenge of death."—

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is another didactic poem. We shall have also to

deal with it in detail, with the beauty and confusion of its glorification of a

personal god.5

Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad is the third and the last and obviously far too the

latest of the texts in question that are being emphasised here. It is predomi-

nantly in prose and its style is similar to the one of the old Brāhmaṇas and

Upaniṣads. And yet it is considerably different from them. Persons appearing

here are sketched in a very different style. They are different from the teachers

with their herd-protecting pupils of the old Upaniṣads or the Brahmanas

who dispute before a king for the reward of cows and gold. King Bhadratha

"renounced everything, when he knew that his body is perishable and went

away into the forest. He observed there great austerity. He stood there

looking into the sun with stretched-out arms. After thousand (years) had

passed, he approached an ascetic, who resembled a smokeless fire, filled with

singed fervour, the knower of the Ātman, the venerable Śākāyana." These

are the personalities, and they have hardly any connection with the antiquity

of the Vedic period. These Upaniṣads belong to the Indian Middle Ages,

and their style is in tune with this period. I think, they unmistakably indicate

a later period than the early Buddhistic. The endless enumerations—say, of

many mighty kings who had all to leave this world, or of the vices arising

from the "Guṇas", the constituents of the life in nature—surpass altogether

the dimensions within which the old Buddhistic texts used to keep themselves.

So also the excessive series of imageries describing the misery of the mind

caught up in worldly affairs (see below), or unlimited expansion of many

word-compounds. These are the candid characteristics of a later style. They

cannot mislead us in their totality and mutual agreement.

If we take into consideration, as regards the contents, the additions made

to the original core of these Upaniṣads containing what is the most important,

then what we get is a mothey and confused muddle of the old sacrificial

concepts and ritualistic symbolism and of comparatively new philosophemes.

Many extensive quotations—also they are characteristic for the later period—give examples of lost philosophical texts. They would throw a light on important events, only incompletely perceived by us now in the history of speculation.

We have now to deal with these events. These events narrated by the Upaniṣads just mentioned are the most important, or they are at least hinted at.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀMKHYA-SYSTEM

Relationship with the Older Speculation in General

A progress resembling the literary form of the later Upaniṣads is seen here in the style of thinking. Traces of magic concepts and fantastic monstrosities, into which we still stray, become now sparse. Although the intimacy also of these thinkers with sacrifice and the word of the Veda emerges so often strongly, their own thoughts distance themselves more and more from it in their essential contents.⁹ Instead, a serious and a consequential attempt is made to capture the psychological facts in the mental horizon and analyse them. A terminology giving support to the thinking is perfected and created afresh in many points. Clearly defined beginnings of the formulation of a system become visible. The creative geniality of the preceding age effective on the whole has now abated. How could also the movement have progressed with the same strength from peak to peak without pause, without the profit won in the boldest throw of dice being acquired, perfected and refined by quiet work? What was now to be achieved may be called the work of the epigones. But those who felt called upon to do this work did not fail. They had gone forward on the paths they found opened. Not always on surer steps, but yet full of thoughts and searching for clarity: thus they brought the speculation closer to places where great creations could emerge anew, in fact, they have emerged.

That clear-cut plan of the course of development revealed in the history of Greek philosophy, the plastic self-detachment of the personalities of thinkers and the systems of thoughts from one another, is also missing now. Viscous flows the stream forward; only gently are the changes perceived affecting its course. Thus the milieu in which the further development of old thoughts is mainly visible is defined only incompletely against its ambiences. But yet it is perceived only to a certain degree in its special features. It is characterised by the catchword Sāṃkhya. A primary stage of the later classical Sāṃkhya-system having this name is developed now itself.

The Name Sāṃkhya

Sāṃkhya means the one ruled by number, the one determined according to number.⁷ It is not the question here, somewhat in the sense of the Pytha-

gorian doctrine, of transferring the last truth, the metaphysical essence, to the number. The number has only a superficial role. The problem is that of counting the categories worked out in definite series, to know, definitely, neither more nor less, the number of chains in every series.⁸ This, especially the Indian, tendency of enumeration, lending exactitude to the work of thought and driving it to a complete survey of the matter—although fraught with danger that the problems are considered as being solved all too early with the help of enumeration—does not, of course, begin only here. But it appears here more intensively than before to stay alive in the Indian sciences: till those periods, where the poetics projects eighty types of metaphorical expressions, and the science of love even three hundred and eighty four types of beloveds before a studious pupil in a well-organised structure.

Kapila and the Other Philosophers

The names of the thinkers to whom the new philosophy is attributed arouse confidence in so far as, at least, the other personalities, and not the sacrificial theologians of the old Upaniṣads, appear in a better tradition.⁹ At the top is Kapila; he has always been considered as the founder of the Sāṃkhya-doctrine. In all probability a real personality, but completely lost in the nebula of the legend. The oldest reference mentioning him informs that nothing inferior than the Brahman:

"bore in his mind the first-begotten seer

Kapila and saw when born."¹⁰

The philosopher Pañcaśikha (the one "with five plaits of hair") emerges beside him. Not in the same tradition, but unmistakably in a good one. There prevailed nonetheless a strong confusion later among the names of the elders connected with the Sāṃkhya-doctrine. Just as once the sacrificial theologian Āsuri and later the Vārṣaganya had become a prophet of the Ātman doctrine, we see now the same famous man launch the leading philosophy of this period, the Sāṃkhya in the great Epic. Unfortunately, it is obviously in conformity with such an unfounded belief when the great Epic names an Asita Devala to be happy about the chronological reference here reminding us of Buddha’s times. For Asita Devala is called a seer in a Buddhistic legend. He had visited child Buddha and predicted his glory. But this apparent bridge between the memories of the Sāṃkhya-school and Buddhism is demolished by a closer examination.¹¹

The Upaniṣads and the Epic as Sources

The recollections about the beginnings and the older form of Sāṃkhya have reached us in a form rather not favourable for our knowledge of the details, and not at all, for the understanding of the urgent motifs. We do not

136

possess a text from the ancient period that would deliver the system of such Sāṃkhya. What we have, first of all, in several Upaniṣads—particularly in the three just discussed above (p. 131ff.)—are individual parts, in which the style of the Sāṃkhya and that of the Yoga closely connected with it, is characteristically revealed, although scarcely without the intermingling of other styles.12 That in the earliest Upaniṣads something of that sort is missing, at least for the Sāṃkhya, may be unhesitatingly explained by saying that this system did not exist then. The inner consistency of development is unconditionally and convincingly in agreement with it. Accordingly, it can be supposed that the later Upaniṣads mentioned above, particularly the oldest of them,— Kāṭhaka Up.—reach almost up to the time of Sāṃkhya's origin. But what they contain of this system are fragments, at times in vague and confused language. They can be understood only then when we refer, for interpretation, to the epical and the later Sāṃkhya we shall be discussing soon. But then we are fraught, at every step, with the danger of confusing earlier and later forms of these concepts.

A further stage, to be more exact, a muddle of several such stages in the development of the Sāṃkhya becomes evident in the great Epic, the Mahā-bhārata. This stage is obviously advanced in comparison with the products of the Upaniṣads, as it also corresponds to the period in which the texts were composed. The development is comparatively meagre in the much celebrated episode of the Bhagvadgītā, but quite extensive in the mass of dialogues heaped over one another in endless repetitions in the section Mokṣadharma (“Doctrine of Deliverance”, in Book XII).13 There an “old story” is usually narrated of discussions in which some sage of some period, divulges to a prince, equally invulnerable to a chronological consideration, the last mysteries of the Being, in a plain hackneyed language which is peculiar to the poetic mass production of these later parts of the Mahābhārata. The protector of the earth, master of men, manly bull, the man tiger, listens to the revelations made by the best of the sages with full devotion, and after having heard the blissful word, he is filled with seemly joy. It is no wonder that in the dialogues boasting of such a banal dazzle, the philosophical thought is expressed in a language which is much less dazzling. Here those authors have have heard of the thoughts to be discussed only from a distance. Carelessly and pompously they throw around the catchwords reachig their ears. They are less bothered about the real punchlines of the development of thoughts than the imposing impression of the catchwords and rhetorically effective tirades. Crass contradictions do not give them pain. But in spite of all such infirmities, the importance of these sources of the history of Sāṃkhya should not be underestimated. They express on the whole, even if in their own way, the thoughts which are older than they themselves are. They clothe the skeleton with blood and flesh. This unfolds before our eyes the sparse allusions, the brief catchwords of the Upaniṣads, and thus let us often recognise the genuine, old organism while offering us various worthless and torn images. So it will be possible—in fact, we have reached this stage in many

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀṂKHYA AND YOGA

137

respects—14 to recognise, if not everywhere certainly, the pre-classical Sāṃkhya. It appears at first, in connection with the Ātman-speculation of the earlier Upaniṣads, in the later of these texts, and then in a more developed form in the Epic. In addition it has contributed to the Buddhistic ideology in assuming a form which could look forward to unforeseeable influences.

Dualism

We have seen above how basically a dualistic trend is present in the Ātman-doctrine of the Brhad Āranyaka and Chāndogya Upaniṣad. That enthusiastic attention and respect was shown only to one of the two sides, concealed this dualism, but it did not remove it. Clear unity of the Ātman dwells only in the otherworld. In this world it has entered an existence which is different from it. The immortal has entered the world of suffering and death. That this one who has mastered death was seen as created at the end by the Ātman itself did not change the fact that the one is inimically opposed to the other in its essence and value in the world we inhabitate.

Thus this dualism so characteristic for the Sāṃkhya was by no means a new creation. The achievement of this system was rather to give a thought to the dualism alerady present and develop it further. Above all, on the side of Non-Ātman. If it was emphatically asserted from the ancients that the plurality in the world receives light from the One, then the author could not, in the long run, shirk his duty imposed afterwards in the older Upaniṣads, of working out also the opposite side of this thought: that the plurality receives light from the One. It was worth to strive for perfection of the conception of the world also in this direction. The younger authors like to believe that it can be attained. Furthermore, as the emphasis on the world-sorrow and on the shattering of existence grew along with one's looking to Brahman (for deliverance), the attention had indeed to be given more decisively to the fact that the search of deliverance so urgently sought does not necessarily occur only in the realm of the Ātman, but that an action or a happening secured as always had to intervene in the sphere of the non-ego—say as it is prescribed by the Yoga—. Also from this side it was felt necessary to establish the structure of the earthly sphere more carefully.

The answer given by the Sāṃkhya to the question of the non-ego was presented simultaneously in one concept and in a system of three concepts; then in a longer series of concepts. It will be considered later.

The Material Fundamental Principle (Prakṛti)

The doctrine of the one fundamental principle of the material world was established. The man now reached the goal, the undeterminable, after surpassing all those old mental games, which in search of the last, the undeterminable, had not been in a position to do away with the traces of the shadowy certainty (above p. 43. 44). This was called Avyaktam (Neutr.), “the undeve-

loped" in the oldest of the references which have come down to us. It is a

name which clearly indicates its task. It produces the "developed" from itself.

Then two names, Pradhānam (neutr.) "the principle being" and Prakṛti (fem.)

"the basic entity" are added in the tradition. We do not know whether they

are as old as avyaktam. Prakṛti in contrast to the spiritual principle, the

Ātman, called here mostly Puruṣa (literally "man"), suggests through its

gender the idea of giving birth, of motherhood. I think, the term does not

suggest that this "basic entity" is also imperishable and uncreated like the

spiritual principle. It is sufficiently explained by the relationship of the Prakṛti

with the world produced by it. The question about the creation or non-crea-

tion of Prakṛti by the Ātman-Puruṣa cannot be convincingly answered in the

beginnings of the Sāṁkhya. There are fluctuations in the Epic. Perhaps the

traces of the odest belief in creation can be established from them.18 But in

any case, establishment and naming of a uniform principle—probably after

the model of one Ātman—could hardly work other than in the direction that

this principle of nature stepped in front of the spiritual principle as an equally

absolute, eternal and a powerful antagonist. This happened in the course of

development although it had not happened from the beginning.

A great forward step was done with the introduction of Avyaktam and

Prakṛti. Now the plurality of existence in the world integrated to a definitely

pronounced unity offered itself more easily and invitingly to an analytical

observation than in the uncertainly fluctuating sphere of concept of the earlier

period, and the old, not so clear antithesis between unity and plurality assu-

med now a changed form. Now onwards, it is a question of pure unity and of

another which has within itself a factor of plurality and it is developed into a

plurality.

The Three Guṇas

It is an interesting spectacle how the thinking let immediately—perhaps

from the first moment—the motif of plurality become a factor in the Avyakt-

am in the form of three "Guṇas" or constituents. They are, so to say, three

threads,16 as the word signifies, joined to an Avyaktam as if to a rope. They

are called sattva, rajas and tamas. They mean, resp., what is mild, joyful; what

is moved and painful and finally what is dark, gloomy and rigid.

Was Kapila attracted, or whosoever he was, who gave shape to this

doctrine, by number three as the first number of plurality which leads beyond

the narrow region of the dual into the unlimitedness of plurality? In any case,

the doctrine of the Guṇas found a connecting link to the older circles of ideas

and play of fantasies referring to number three and preparing a ground for

the construction of this triad. I think that the tripartition of the various areas

of existence belongs there. It distinguishes, in accordance with the three castes

of Aryan community life, the first, so to say, the Brahmanic type, then the one

of the marshal expression of power and lastly, the one of the humble commo-

ners among gods, verse-measures of the Vedic hymns, among seasons as

among numbers (comp. above p. 14). Then we have the three worlds—heaven,

air-region, earth—. The middle of this has given the middle Guṇa its name

(Rajas). We have also to refer to that account of world-creation (p. 43f.),

where the material world formed of the three basic elements of heat (fire),

water, food, or of red, white and black, is contrasted with the Ātman: so that

the sun and the moon, fire and lightning are put together from the red form

of heat, white of the water and black of the food, and the sun and the moon

as mere words disappear before the sat in reality in those three forms. The

allocation of the colours white, red and black in three Guṇas leaves hardly

any doubt about the prevailing connection. We noticed long ago that a verse

of the Atharvaveda (X, 8, 43) directly names the three Guṇas. By them—

perhaps as the word Guṇa suggests, they are considered as being interwoven

in a covering—is covered "the lotus flower with nine doors" wherein the

soul dwells: the body17 which might be considered as built out of the three

basic elements in the history of creation just mentioned, or out of three Guṇas

themselves. They are retained then in the Sāṁkhya.18 When a verse of the

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad names

"a red and white and black she-goat"

which litters many young ones, it is no more to be ascribed to the primary

stages of this Sāṁkhya-doctrine. What we have before us is the Sāṁkhya-

doctrine itself. The one he-goat covers the she-goat with lust; the other for-

sakes her after enjoying her. The word "she-goat" simultaneously means "the

unborn" (female) and "he goat" "the unborn" (male). The she-goat is the

Prakṛti; her three colours—the same as in that history of creation—are the

Guṇas. The he-goat is the spirit which is not released from its connection with

the nature and the divine or the spirit which is released.

The Guṇa-triad does not reproduce exactly any of the prototypes appea-

ring to have a role here, and it cannot reproduce them exactly. The three types

of gods, the three castes mentioned above, they keep themselves all through

in the sphere of more or less the noble, the one to be acknowledged, whereas

the Guṇas comprise the realm of the one to be rejected. Thus among their

colours, only two colours of those castes can recur: the white of the Brahmana

and the red of the Kṣatriya for Sattva and Rajas. Instead of the yellow belong-

ing to Vaiśya, the black of the Śūdra has to come for the third Guṇa.19 Simil-

arly, while the middle of the three worlds lent its nomenclature to the Guna-

system, the nomenclature of the first and the third world did not appear to

be applicable. Even among themselves, the names of the Guṇas themselves

do not fully agree. Rajas in the midst: the air-empire with its gloomy atmos-

phere. Then Tamas: the darkness. Correspondingly, the first Guṇa would be

expected to be most naturally Jyotis "light". Was this expression avoided

because light appears to be belonging to the spirit (Puruṣa) exalted beyond

that triad above the nature? What is selected, (is obviously a fairly arbitrary

term Sattva, "reality"—specifically referring to the firm reality surpassing

everything else.

140

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

It is quite evident that we have before us, in all this, basically, an individual

conception of an individual thinker, unharmed by dependence upon the older

conception. These three basic types of existence appear to him as if in tangible

form. Compared, say, with that castelike division of the universe (p. 14)

looking over to the divine empire and Vedic metres, how more freely were

they considered, how much more clearly did they portray the life in the world!

The question about the nature or physiognomy of the individual Guṇas

was already answered by one of those Upaniṣads which contain the oldest

evidences of the Sāṁkhya, at least for the second and the third chain of the

triad by an enumeration of feelings and circumstances belonging there. As

originating from Rajas, feelings like love and hatred are emphasised, ill-will,

mania for harming someone, fickleness, absent-mindedness, urge for main-

taining upper hand, hatred against unpleasant impressions, clinging to the

pleasant. Of the Tamas-nature are confusion, fear, sleep, thoughtlessnessness,

infirmity of age, pain, hunger, thirst, anger, ignorance, envy, uneven behaviour

towards the one and the other.30 The border is not clearly drawn between

the areas. Why are, for example, hatred and anger, or ill-will and envy on

different sides? On the whole, however, the difference worked out more dis-

tinctly by the next period becomes clearly prominent: what belongs to the

Rajas is the excited, the passionate; to the Tamas, what is blunt, lifeless. The

character of the unfavourable and the fateful is also prominent on the side of

Rajas. This dominates consequently on two of the three areas. This conforms

to the basic tone of pessimism becoming more and more loud here. Then the

epical texts add the image of Sattva missing in the description of the first

Guṇa. In it, there is a talk about delight, joy, brilliance, purity, health, pati-

ence, solidity, truth, being considerate for the welfare of the others and

sympathy for all creatures. In short, goodness of all sorts as far as it appears

outside the sphere of the Eternal, purely spiritual, in the turbulence of life

in the world. In differentiation of these three realms, very little thought is

given to the physical existence to which the names of the second and the third

Guṇa refer. This doctrine tries to analyse at a go what is physical and ethical,

and above all, its basic form.

Let us look back from the individual Guṇas once more to their signi-

ficance on the whole. Are they powers or qualities of the “undeveloped”?

Or are they rather substances? The classical Sāṁkhya-doctrine emphasises

quite decisively and explicitly the latter view. Correspondingly, it speaks of

the undeveloped as “the sum of Guṇas”; it compares the relation of that

principle with the Guṇas with that between the forest and trees. The expres-

sion “Guṇa” itself, pointing to the threads against the rope twined from

them, in addition, the expressions of the Upaniṣads, obviously attributing

independent existence and experience to the Guṇas, confirm this view also for

the ancient period. I suppose, this substantiality of the Guṇas need not be

moved off, in the sense of the earlier Sāṁkhya, far from the idea of powers

and qualities. It is part and parcel of the character of ancient thinking that a

clear distinction between substances, powers and qualities was never made.21

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THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀMKHYA AND YOGA

The power inherent in a being is itself a being that physically enters or comes

out from it, perhaps by the order of a magician who guides it hither or thither.

It does not, of course, mean that the old Sāṁkhya-doctrine stands on the

same footing with such a belief in magic. But it is not yet separated from it

everywhere by unsurmountable barriers. Thus, we may be permitted to explain

the Guṇas of the older Sāṁkhya, in unavoidably uncertain imagery, by saying

that substances are seen in them—it would be going a step too far to speak

of nebulous, so to say, impersonal personalities—. Substances whose nature

it is to exert certain basic forms of influence, that they are, in fact, this

influence.

But as it can be understood, difficulties and obfuscations, above all, con-

cerning the relationship of the Guṇas with the “undeveloped” remain. The

idea of the threads and the rope, as also that later imagery of trees and forest

could appear to mean that the last principle of the phenomenal world is to

be found more in Guṇas rather than in the undeveloped: there have to be

threads first, if a rope is to be made out of them. As a matter of fact, the

claim of the undeveloped that it is the last and the highest was indeed admit-

ted; enumeration of the creatures in the world—to which of course the world-

ly Puruṣa does not belong—was turned to it, and not to the Guṇas, as if it

meant a full stop. The Guṇas were named in one of the Upaniṣads as “belonging

to the Prakṛti'', and later even “as born from the Prakṛti'', but not the

Prakṛti as “belonging to the Guṇas” or as “born from the Guṇas''. The desire

to ascend to the source of existence appeared to be more completely quenched

by reaching the One than by reaching the Three. Thus the Guṇas did represent

a welcome change, no doubt, for the imagination, from the One to the un-

limited plurality, but they do not have a serious answer to the question how

the unity of the undeveloped and its self-equality could come out of its colour-

less indifference and lifeless peace to give birth to diversity and conflict. The

authors of the Sāṁkhya-doctrine could scarcely have become conscious of

the difficulty inherent in this question in its complete power appearing to us

to be unsurmountable. As far as they are at all concerned with the problem,

they would hardly have been embarrassed by some sort of an urge within the

Avyaktam for becoming and plurality and for the disturbance of an equilibri-

um coming from somewhere; in fact it mattered little from where.22 The

question concerning the Guṇas was for them much less important than the

question more significant for man's striving for salvation, like how minute

variations of eudemonistic and ethical values are classified among themselves

and which elements it contains this infinitely manifold play of intermingling

of the inner brightness and darkness, of free happiness, combatativeness and

rigidity. We do not have to find how finally these problems concerning the

one and the three were satisfactorily resolved. In fact, they were not resolved.

But a series of ideas ended up at this place; and it ended up where it alone

could end up; it ended up in an unilluminated darkness.

We shall consider the enumeration of the “developed” creatures later. The

emergence of the world from the Avyaktam was depicted in it. But we must

mention here itself that the Guṇas also do not appear in this enumeration

beside understanding, ego-principle, elements, etc. It was opined that their

appearance has to be logically expected. But in the course of history of this

system-building, the enumeration of the creatures developed from the Prakṛti

on the one hand and the doctrine of the Guṇas, on the other hand, were

independently worked out. And that is why the Guṇas were probably not

included in that enumeration: the list must have been already completed.

Only so much is correct in understanding this course of events that the Guṇa-

doctrine, as we have seen, had its own pre-history unconnected with the pre-

paration of that list. It may be added that the Guṇas were obviously not men-

tioned in the oldest of the texts connected with the Sāṃkhya.

may be a trace of Sāṃkhya here and Sāṃkhya did not yet adopt that cha-

racteristic doctrine, even though to conclude this from its mere silence remains

highly uncertain in view of the brevity and the fragmentary character of what

is said in that Upaniṣad. On the other hand, it is to be noted that Sāṃkhya's

list of the creatures in the world was by no means unalterably fixed in the

period when Sāṃkhya was doubtlessly working with the Guṇas. We shall

come back to it later. Thus, if an occasion was found to include these three in

the list, then it would have been possible. But was there an occasion? For the

want of clarity in the Guṇa-doctrine we have been discussing, a thought

unmistakably emerges that the Guṇas are not the product of Avyaktam in

the same sense as, say, understanding or elements. They have a different, a

more fundamental character. When it is, however, said—not in the most

ancient sources—that they are born of Prakṛti, then they are again the threads,

and the rope Prakṛti consists of them. In that analogy of three-coloured she-

goats, they are the developments coming out of the Avyaktam, the young

ones littered by the mother animal; the Guṇas are the colours of the she-goat.

The world is called "of three Guṇas" (trigunam) in the Upaniṣads we are

dealing with here.

It is based on "transformation (of the Prakṛti) in the

partition of the three Guṇas". The Epic teaches that Guṇas are inseparably

united everywhere, here the one superior to the other, there obedient to it;

they all appear, on their own inevitable, here so, there so, in everything that

is phenomenal. Thus, the Guṇas are constantly represented as, mainly so to

say, placed over the individual developments of Prakṛti; they typify general

basic trends according to which every existence is established. I think, it will

appear accordingly perhaps not cogently motivated, but all the same, momen-

tously, that the Guṇas were not included in the list, although the identifiers

of the list of evolution were completely aware of the Guṇas.

The Guṇas are often more important for the imagination of the old authors

of the Sāṃkhya than the Avyaktam. Vividness, restlessness, all that is inherent

in the happenings in the world, but mainly the painful pathos, are expressed

in them. And the meaningless idea of the Avyaktam does not make them feel

anything of this. Cooperation or conflict of the two mighty powers, nature

and spirit—the lofty theme of the Sāṃkhya—gets vivid life, passionate liveli-

ness, while the Guṇas and not the Avyaktam, are allowed to be opposed to the

śpirit.

It is not surprising that the concept of the Guṇas, this successful creation

of the Sāṃkhya, had exerted its influence far beyond its realm. The Buddhistic

circles later did not take any notice of this concept, because the Guṇas were

part and parcel of metaphysical conceptions they rejected. But this habit of

the Indian fantasy of finding again and again these three basic characters in

all life and happenings is evident in various other fields, in poetry and right

into the popular world of ideas. Of course, many fields of later philosophy of

India did not envisage any interest in the Guṇas. The clarity and the astitute-

ness attained by the analysis of reality, liked to find in those ideas still too

strong a mystic tinge, a certain fantastic corporeality resisting any abstraction.

We can clearly recognise here the intermediate position of the Sāṃkhya

between the Yoga and the modern times. If we were to measure this position

by applying the Greek criteria, then the Sāṃkhya, at least its older form dis-

cussed here, would perhaps be found on the same level with the Pythagorean

philosophy, and it would be hardly saying too much, if it is said that some-

thing of the method of Aristotle can be felt in the later Indian systems.—

The Spiritual Principle (Puruṣa)

The action of Guṇas now is developed completely in its opposition to the

spiritual principle. So also, the image of spirit is formed by Sāṃkhya towards

the same opposition, and it can be understood only from it. Therefore, we

must first discuss the other side of the dualism.

The spiritual principle appears occasionally in this doctrine in the old

terms Brahman or Ātman. But the predominant, so to say, the technical term

is now rather Puruṣa, in its basic meaning "man".

This word is often found in older texts like Bṛhad Āraṇyaka. It is used

there many times for lively mighty creatures which are living in something

else and are active in it. Correspondingly, a fantastic etymology is given to it:

puriśaya meaning "inhabitants of a fortress" (literally: "lying in a fortress").

Thus one speaks of Puruṣa who is in the sun, in the moon, in ether and wind,

in fire and in water. Also the great spirit dwelling in the universe, the highest

Ātman, is called Puruṣa in the texts of this group. When the history of creation

of the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka lets "the Ātman in Puruṣa-form" be there at the begin-

nings of things, then the concrete idea "man" becomes predominant. But

Puruṣa is exalted to full spirituality and pure formlessness of the Ātman in

the highest sense of this word, when he is given the name "No, no" (p. 39f.)

or "real of the real" used so willingly for Ātman. And the identity of Puruṣa

with Ātman emerges clearly—the Absolute, not anything else but my and

your Ātman—, when for example, one speaks of "Puruṣa of the eye" with

reference to the state of sleep, the real seer for whom the eye serves only as a

tool; he is "the Ātman" in snelling, speaking, hearing; only his tool is nose,

voice, ear. The evidences to show the use of Puruṣa as a synonym for Ātman

144

in the old Upaniṣads can be easily multiplied. Perhaps only a nuance can be

observed without a sharp division in use of both the words being ascertained.

One thinks in Ātman predominantly of a principle of life and light most firmly

interwoven with a creature whose Ātman it is. Indeed it is rather just this

creature. The "Puruṣa" likes to be inherent, as already mentioned, simultane-

ously in another creature so that he is also inclined to lead his own existence,

leaving this abode, or even dispensing altogether with an abode, while he is,

as the name suggests, a law unto himself as a "man" and has to some extent,

a perfect form. It is remarkable that the language likes to combine a genitive

with the ātman to express whose Ātman is meant, but a locative with the

puruṣa so say wherein this Puruṣa lives. Accordingly, it could be supposed that

the preference of the term Puruṣa for the spiritual principle in the Sāṃkhya

is connected with the stronger separation of the spirit from the nature and

their antithesis which is prevalent in this system. His role as an animator and

a ruler of the nature declines still more decisively than before with respect to

the thought that he is basically on the other side of the nature and has to

return to this freedom which is his.26 Like the old Upaniṣads which use the

term "Puruṣa" besides "Ātman", "Ātman" is maintained besides "Puruṣa"

in the language of the Sāṃkhya. And the Epic is clearly a testimony to it:27

"Ātman of any creature—it is called Puruṣa in the Sāṃkhya."

Thus it is confirmed beyond all doubt that Puruṣa of the later doctrine

corresponds completely to the Ātman of the older one. In fact, it has really

wholly taken over its hereditary share. This will be discussed later.

One of the oldest among the verses of those Upaniṣads containing the

Sāṃkhya-ideas speaks of the all-surpassing heights in which the Puruṣa reigns.

The poet reaches finally the zenith, in fact a double zenith after climbing

• through a series of entities, particularly those derived from the physical, to

higher and higher principles—from mind (manas) to intellect (buddhi) and to

the "great Ātman" (we have still to consider its meaning). Higher than the

"great" stands the Undeveloped, higher than the Undeveloped, the Puruṣa.

"There is nothing higher than Puruṣa; it is the goal, the highest action.

The highest Ātman is not seen resting in all beings,

Yet through the most profound subtlety of understanding,

they perceive it, who see the subtile."

Evolution of Prakṛti

This height does not, however, relieve the Puruṣa of the hostile opposition

to power. This power is, in fact, assigned a place under him, but it is found

more and more decisively to be the final, the absolute, like the Puruṣa himself:

the creative nature, the undeveloped, the Guṇas. It was already pointed out

how the thinking, striving beyond the uncertainties with which the earlier

period allowed itself to be satisfied, worked out this opposition by becoming

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀMKHYA AND YOGA

145

more and more conscious of the goal. The Prakṛti conceived more keenly and

more energetically develops a power with which she keeps a successful equili-

brium with the Puruṣa. In fact, she is capable of overpowering him for a

period.

And thus the world-filling happening about which the philosophers narrate

runs its course: Puruṣa's involvement in suffering and his release from suffe-

ring.

The Prakṛti, the undeveloped, develops herself. The one three-coloured

she-goat (p. 139) litters its many young ones.

The epical and classical Sāṃkhya portrays the series of these develop-

ments in a list of principles (tattva). They form, so to say, the backbone of the

Sāṃkhya-doctrine. As everywhere, the number of principles is carefully noted

down in this system "based on number" (sāṃkhya). Together with the Un-

developed they are twentyfour. Puruṣa is the twentyfifth besides them, sepa-

rated from that series of development.

We shall survey the list of the Tattvas in their classical form. The list also

agrees with the Epic in most of the points.

Spiritual entities—spiritual, as far as one can speak of spirituality on this

side which is opposed to the Puruṣa—appear as the first and the highest of

the developments next to the Undeveloped. At the top is the intellect (buddhi),

also called "the great" (mahat, māhan). Ego-principle (ahaṃkāra) emanates

from it. Mind (manas)28 or the inner sense from it. Besides the mind, the ten

external senses or organs emanate from the ego-principle: the five sensory

organs (seeing, hearing, smell, taste and feeling) and the five organs of action

(speaking, holding, going, evacuating and procreating). Similarly, five fine

elements (tanmātra) emanate from the ego-principle: the basic matters of

sound, feeling, colour, taste and smell. From these finally, and corresponding

to them—the more direct nature of this correspondence need not be pursued—

the five crude elements: ether, air, fire, water and earth.29

We do not intend to give individual explanation of this series of Tattvas.

It is given only as a clue to the question of presence and semblance of just

such a series in the oldest Sāṃkhya available to us, the one of the Upaniṣads.

For even though we have to be satisfied there at first with stray and fragmen-

tary expressions, we have to find out whether these details are not really part

and parcel of a system resembling a later one, whether there is life in them.

And only comparison with that system makes it possible for us to discover all

this.

The terms of the classical Tattva-series are constantly indicated by name

in the Sāṃkhya-portions of the Upaniṣads. This is sometimes done individual-

ly, sometimes in groups, and the names coincide exactly or almost exactly

with those of the later doctrine. In addition to this, there are other termino-

logies like the Guṇas. They are very close to this circle of ideas. When we

take this into consideration, so much becomes extremely possible, that there

was—as the name of the system current even then suggests—a numerically

definite enumeration of basic categories also in this oldest Sāṃkhya, and it

146

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

was identical at least on the whole with the later. And further, as this enumera-

tion culminates, apart from the Puruṣa, in the "Undeveloped" like the later,

there could scarcely be any doubt—this was occasionally mutely presumed

above—that the purpose, decisive for the later series, of describing the order

of evolution of the entities from the original cause, was also prevalent in the

Sāṃkhya of the Upaniṣads.

We may presume without hesitation that even in this old Sāṃkhya, the

world activity arises from the Undeveloped in such a way that the Prakṛti, as

the Epic expresses it,30 changes the Guṇas with utmost ease in hundredfold

and thousandfold multiplications,

"As thousand lights are awakened from a light into a blaze of flames."

It corresponds completely to the tone in which the Upaniṣads are accusto-

med to speaking of Guṇas, and this can certainly be traced back to their

sphere of ideas, when the Epic—almost with the same words of the main text

of the classical Sāṃkhya—describes how those three factors of the life in the

world do their common work:

"The one pairing with the other, this supporting itself on that,

Getting permanence from one another, the one following the other,

Resting interlaced in one another"—

it is the motif of plurality, the motif of becoming and movement in its natural

bond that so often emerges in the history of thinking...

Which are now the entities originating first of all in the evolution of the

world in the oldest Sāṃkhya, nearest to the Undeveloped? According to the

Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad ("higher than the mind is the intellect, higher than

the intellect the great Ātman, higher than the Great, is the Undeveloped"), it will

be presumed that the "great Ātman", intellect (buddhi) and mind (manas)

appeared climbing down in a row from the Undeveloped.

The approximate agreement on the whole, but also difference in individual

cases, in the corresponding parts of the later series of principles becomes

quite obvious. There the "Great" is identical with the intellect. And the ego-

principle is added between intellect and mind.

The first of these deviations can be easily explained. The texts make it

probable that the concept of the "great Ātman" has suffered a transformation.

And this is on account of the drastic developments in this whole sphere of

ideas. The "great Ātman" is originally not what it is later: i.e., the first and

the topmost among the developments of Prakṛti. In fact, the name Ātman

places it rather on the other side of the all-dominating dualism. The tradition

also points out to the same direction. It is said in Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad soon

after naming the great Ātman in a succession of entities in a verse we have

already quoted (p. 144):

"The Ātman is hidden in all beings and does not shine forth;"

147

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀṂKHYA AND YOGA

it is obvious to equate the Ātman here with the great Ātman named just

before and to understand that the Puruṣa even goes by the name "great

Ātman" as far as he (the Puruṣa) has entered an alien entity from his solitude

and he abides hiding in it.31 This is also confirmed by the fact that one more

term used for the catchword Ātman appears. This denotes similarly in all

probability originally the Puruṣa in his individualisation, his being inherent

in the empirical individual being. And consequently he is just only a variant

of the great Ātman in this stage of development. He is the Bhūtātman, literal-

ly "the elemental Ātman", i.e., the Ātman living in the elements; its nature

as an emanation of the universal Puruṣa is clearly revealed in several verses.32

Finally, we are reminded of what is said several times in the Epic that the

great Ātman originates from the Puruṣa, to be more exact, it is the Puruṣa

in his individualisation.33

It was likely that the desire not to let, so to say, a strange body exist

between the Prakṛti and the entities developed from her in the large series of

categories, asserted itself in connection with the increasing chasm between

Puruṣa and Prakṛti. It tended to assign absolute power to the Prakṛti over

the whole series only with the exception of the Puruṣa. It appeared proper

that he remained alone in his proud solitude without any adherents. A further

impetus had to be given in the same direction as nothing definite was perhaps

decided about the fate of great Ātman. It was done by letting the universal

Puruṣa be divided, as it is to be shown later, into countless individual Puruṣas.

These took over what remained of the function once attributed to the great

Ātman. With that, this Ātman, in its old sense, lost every right for existence.

So it happened that it was moved over to the evolutions of Prakṛti.34 It was

accommodated there as good as it could be done. It entered the topmost

place which was already occupied. It was next to its accustomed place in

order of evolution. It was declared as identical with the owner of this place,

the "intellect" so that the earlier succession Mahān Ātmā and Buddhi was

now condensed to one term Mahān or Buddhi. What is conspicuous of this

double naming is combined with the explicit evidences for the differentiation

of both the terms to show the shifting that has taken place here.

It is more difficult to interpret the second of both the discrepancies men-

tioned above between the enumeration of higher principles in the Kāṭhaka

Upaniṣad and in the later Sāṃkhya than to interpret these events. Does the

Upaniṣad testify to an original form of the system in which the ego-principle

was missing? Or was it there right from the beginning, and it is only on account

of the particular objective of the passage in question that it remained there

unmentioned? The fact is that even the Epic for which this principle was

doubtlessly established has often left it unmentioned in specific contexts.

In any case, the later triad of this highest development—intellect, mind and

the ego-principle—is repeatedly asserted by the Upaniṣads in question, except

just only the Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad. It is done often in a form that the functions

constantly attributed to these powers now, as in the classical Sāṃkhya, were

enumerated trinomially: reflection as the function of mind, determination

as that of intellect and volition for oneself as that of the ego-principle.35 Yet

a difference between the older and the later version has to be maintained in

so far as the third place was assigned, as it appears, to the ego-principle in

the beginning after intellect and mind. This was done perhaps to characterise

it as more crude, more material, what is far away from the transcendental

origin. Later it was given second place in exchange with mind. I suppose,

with the intention of associating the mind ("the inner sense") directly with

the "external senses" coming after it and whose main organ is the ego-princi-

ple, and characterising the mind as arising from the ego-principle and affected

by its nature. Perhaps just an insignificant change. It deserves, however, a

consideration as a sign that these thoughts have gone through a pre-classical

form produced by the Upaniṣads before the classical form is reached.

Now the continuation of the series follows the initial elements of the series

discussed here. This is obviously almost the same as in the later period. The

senses or the organs were just mentioned; we know that they are divided later

in two groups of organs of perception and action (comp. above p. 145).

Finally the elements follow appearing, like in the classical period, as five

subtile substances (tanmātra) on the one hand, and also as gross elements

(mahābhūta) on the other hand.36

It is seen that the fabulous monsters of the ancient cosmogonies, the

animals pairing with one another together with staffages of similar kind have

all disappeared from this whole image of the evolution of the world. So also

the concepts referring to the Veda and sacrifice. The atmosphere in which the

Brahman could have been chosen as an adequate name for the world-ground

has vanished. What now appears on the scene are products of rather still

unclear psychological and physical analysis. They shimmer this way and that

way in various colours between cosmic distances and barriers into the sphere

of the individual, and we come across constantly such a jumble of macrocosm

and microcosm also at this stage of speculation.37 The sequence of entities

is arranged in a descending order from the subtile, higher materials to the

gross ones at the lower level. This is different from so many cosmogonies

whose path ascends from lower beginnings to more and more perfect crea-

tions.38 Since the starting point here was Prakṛti conceived in the highest

subtility, it was obvious that one kept in that direction. Thus the evaluation

relating to the world-creation was expressed: a deeper and deeper fall from

the peak. And at the same time it was possible to contrast this movement of

evolution with an opposite of involution. It was depicted how the one aspiring

spiritually succeeds in absorbing the baser with the higherstep by step and how

one attains salvation by turning simultaneously the world process back-

wards.39 It is an individual occurrence preceded by a cosmic one: The cons-

tanty recurring return of developments to the Undeveloped in the regular

coming and going of the world-periods.

The Puruṣa is contrasted with all this surging and simmering, becoming

and ceasing, the unforseeable manifold play of the Guṇas, as the One without

the Guṇas, as it corresponds to the Ātman-speculation from its origin. "Pure,

clean, void, tranquil, breathless, selfless, endless, imperishable, firm, everlas-

ting, unborn, independently abiding in his own majesty."40 And yet sorrowful

events take place between the super-mundane and the mundane. The know-

ledge freeing one from suffering is called upon to illuminate their darkness

and to lead one out of these events.

Puruṣa and Prakṛti

An answer was expected from the dualism of Sāṃkhya to the question how

these two principles quite different in their roots, Puruṣa and Prakṛti come to

find and grasp one another in infinite space and infinite time (Deussen). Is it

perhaps an expression of surprise when it is said that both the entitites, so to

say, did not err in the void without meeting one another at all? Is it possible

that the original Sāṃkhya and also the Epic make the Puruṣa a creator of

Prakṛti in many passages in agreement with the concepts of the old Upani-

ṣads?41 Thus without breaking somehow the points of actual antagonism of

both the principles, as we have already mentioned, there could be an expla-

nation for their being dependent upon each other in some way, for their, so

to say, simply not missing the goal? Was this not clearly ruled out by the

omnipresence attributed to both these entities-whatever then may be the

nuances-? But afterall, there is no need at all of questioning such motiva-

tions. As in a fairy-tale or a dream, what is not supposed to meet, meets

without fail, so also it was obvious that the philosophising fantasy does not

allow the entities destined to stage a universal drama together to lose each

other in infinity without the one finding the other.

The question indicated above would take a more earnest and difficult

shape, if it were to be understood in the sense why Puruṣa and Prakṛti have

not been able to avoid the disastrous connection in which the tragic condition

of the suffering in the world is rooted. As the separation of the both seems

possible in salvation, could they not, did they not have to, persist, as it is their

nature, in such a mutual restraint from the beginning? In fact nothing much

is said in the text we shall soon discuss, when it is narrated that the Highest

Being "thought, when it found that it did not attain its goal, 'I shall enjoy the

things'".42 Whether an explanation can be given or not for something that

cannot be explained, the connection of the two entities had inevitably to take

place. Otherwise, all these masses of thoughts will evaporate in a void. And

yet one does not want again to sacrifice the postulate of the untouchability

of Puruṣa. It is expected of the structure of the thought one erects that it should

explain, on the one hand, the reality full of suffering. But on the other hand,

it should come up to the ideal devoid of suffering as a condition that is actually

established in the nature of objects. One perceives the contradiction one gets

into as an element belonging to the profound meaning of being. Similes have

to make it acceptable:

150

"As the one fire entering the world,

Clings to every form, and yet remains without,

So the one inner Self of all beings,

Clings to every form, and yet remains without.

As the one air entering the world,

Clings to every form, and yet remains without,

So the one inner Self of all beings,

Clings to every form, and yet remains without.

As the sun, the eye of the whole universe

Is not sullied by the external infirmities seen by the eye,

So the one inner Self of all beings

Is not sullied by the misery of the world. It remains without."

The conflict between being inside and being outside, between contact and lack of contact, that has been passed over here easily and smoothly, is obviously not solved in this manner. It will assert itself anew. The thinking will progress on its way in its endeavours towards it.—

The influence of Puruṣa and Prakṛti upon each other shows clearly—the elders don’t seem to have explicitly formulated it thus—a dual form. The Puruṣa plays an active role with respect to the world. He animates, controls, enjoys it. And again he is passive. He is restricted by the world and he suffers on account of it. It is clear how this two-sidedness is an outcome of the basic concepts of the old Upaniṣads. Here the absolute Ātman dominating the world. There the individual Ātman enduring the suffering in the world. Both are identical. tat tvam asi.

The concepts of animating, reigning Puruṣa present inside the nature in man, appear at first to be very close to the ancient views. He, the master of the past and the future abides invisibly as the Self in all beings, smaller than the small, greater than the great,

"as a dwarf sitting in the centre",48

of the size of the thumb in the heart,

"bodiless within the bodies,

Unchanging among changing things."

The physical life reposes in him. The forms are seen with his help, the tunes heard. He helps us to know. He is the charioteer, and his chariot is the body: "his whip consists of Prakṛti; under its driving force it (the chariot) tumbles around, this body, like the potter's wheel turned by the potter." The sun rises from the Puruṣa, the sun sets in the Puruṣa. A verse composed by an older poet on Ātman is repeated here, almost unchanged, for the Puruṣa (comp. p. 46):

"Through fear of him Agni burns,

Through fear of him the sun gives forth heat.

151

Through fear of him both Indra and Vāyu,

And Death as the fifth, speed along."

It is difficult in such all-dominating influences emanating from the Puruṣa not to see an action, whose motivator he is like the Ātman of the old Upaniṣads. It is apt in a certain sense, but also again not apt. The sources do not allow us to judge convincingly which position Sāṃkhya took at its first beginnings. But all the same, provisos were made even early with reference to recognising Puruṣa as the one who acts. "He seeming to be changing, an agent in asat, is in reality not an agent and unchanging . . . remaining there like a spectator."44 The action is taken over by Prakṛti and Guṇas. This action receives light and law from the Puruṣa. He is, as it has been said at times, not a perpetrator, but a maker of action: a clear attempt not to take from him a certain activity, but at the same time again, not attributing it to him directly. When he is considered as a perpetrator and not-perpetrator at the same time in the reference quoted above, it reminds us of a verse which makes him live within the 'world, yet remain without.

He is further an "enjoyer" of Prakṛti and her activity. This is narrated in the tone of an ancient style of concrete narration. After going into the cavity of the heart "he found from within the interior of the heart that he had not attained his goal. He thought, 'I shall enjoy the objects' (literally: eat). Thence having pierced these openings (of five senses), he came out and enjoyed (literally: ate) the objects with the help of five reins."45 Some other time, it is said, "The Puruṣa, the observer, abiding in the material principle (Pradhāna), is also an enjoyer enjoying the food coming from Prakṛti. His food is especially this elemental Ātman;46 its maker is the material principle. Therefore, what is to be enjoyed consists of three Guṇas. But the enjoyer is the Puruṣa abiding within." The Indian language (mode of expression) leaves it to the king to "enjoy" his land and its revenue. The king, the noble is the "feeder"; the common man the "food", "what is eaten". In fact, the antithesis between the "feeder" and the "food" runs through the entire ancient ritualistic literature, and every one desired that he is the feeder. Now how is, in the case of Puruṣa, the manner of this eating and enjoying conceived? After which he feels so little the need of harmonising with his all-satiated majesty? What is meant is seeing and perception of feeling stimulating the world-existence, from where there is no further step to a profound sense of being filled and blinded by such impressions:

"What is called pleasure, suffering, confusion,47

This world, becomes food."

The thought here clearly suggests that the satisfaction offered to the Puruṣa by the world has its other side. The enjoyer fell into a passive role.

"Verily, that subtile, ungraspable, invisible one, called Puruṣa, turns in here with a part of himself, like the awakening of a sleeper taking place without any awareness. That part of him is what the intelligence-mass here in

every person is, the knower of the field, having the marks of conception, de-

termination, and self-conceit (p. 147f.) . . . By him, as intelligence, this body is

also made intelligent, and he is the one, who urges it on to move."48 So far,

Puruṣa could appear to be the master of situation. But the one without the

mark has attached to him "the "mark" (liṅga) of "conception, determination

and self-conceit". That is, he has linked himself with the bearers of these

three functions–intellect, mind and ego-principle: the highest developments

of Prakṛti or Guṇas, so that he appears now in individual manifestations of

which everyone is different from every other by virtue of its complexities of

marks. Many times, there is a talk about the threefold Liṅga described here.

We also come across a further developed concept of Liṅga playing such an

important role in the later Sāṅkhya: "it is the Liṅga beginning from the

'great' and reaching up to the 'peculiarities' (viśeṣa)". It is "the 'fine body' as

it is called later and it consists of products of the Prakṛti, from the highest, the

"great" to the finest elements, but with the exception of the gross elements. It

is the material image of Puruṣa, lasting substratum of the individual existence.

It clothes itself, in the course of metempsychosis, with changing gross bodies

and plays different roles like an actor.

Obligations of the Puruṣa

While the Puruṣa is attaching Liṅga unto himself, he is banished into the

depths. The passage quoted above ends thus: "He stands there hiding himself

in a web spun by the Guṇas". The Epic describes it later with a simile which

reminds us of the meaning of the word Guṇas as threads united in a rope:

"Like the head is covered with threefold cloth-stripes as turban,

So the one with the body covers himself with Sattva, Rajas and

Tamas."

The free one, the highest, is bound. The Upaniṣad says, "Then the Puruṣa

consisting of every desire wearing the mark (liṅga) of determination, concep-

tion and self-conceit is bound. The one with whom the opposite takes place

is free... Carried away by the floods of Guṇas and soiled, unstable, fickle,

robbed, full of desires, thoughtless, fallen to self-conceit 'That am I, this is

mine'–imagining thus, he is caught in himself like a bird in a net. That is

why the Puruṣa with the mark of determination, conception and self-conceit

is bound. The one with whom the opposite takes place is free." In another

passage, the one in bondage is called elemental Ātman (p. 147), and it is

expressed that this one is ill-treated by the Puruṣa with the help of the Guṇas.

Thus the suffering affecting the emanation of the Supreme Being is finally

caused by this Being itself. "Subdued by49 the fruits of action, it (the elemen-

tal Ātman) enters a good or a bad mother's womb. Thus its path leads up-

wards and downwards. Overpowered by contradictions it errs around50…

Like a ball of iron overpowered by fire assumes various forms, hammered by

the smiths, so also indeed, the elemental Ātman overpowered by the inner

Puruṣa, hammered by the Guṇas, assumes various forms . . . Yet the fire is not

subdued when the ball of iron is hammered, so also the Puruṣa is not subdued.

But this elemental Ātman is subdued through its involvement (in the material

world)."

Thus it is a process of the most severe force and its consequences are

unpredictable. The depth of suffering befalling the vanquished is expressed by

the old Upaniṣads only in simple and brief words. Now it becomes an object

of verbose rhetorics wallowing in horrors. The Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad borrows

from a preceding text the whole cascade of similes:51 "Like the waves in

great rivers, what has been previously done, cannot be turned back. Like the

ocean tide which is hard to keep back is the approach of one's death. Like a

cripple he is, fettered by the fruits of good and evil deeds. He is like a man in

prison robbed of his freedom. Beset by many fears, like the one standing

before Yama (the judge of the departed). Like the one intoxicated with wine,

he is intoxicated with the drink of illusion. He rushes around like the one

possessed by evil power. Like one bitten by a big serpent, he is bitten by the

world of senses. Like the profound darkness, he is blinded by passion. Like

jugglery consisting of illusion of magic. Like a dream he is full of deception.

Pithless like the inside of a banana-tree. Like an actor he changes his costume

every moment. Like a painted wall he is of deceptive beauty. And it is said:

"Objects of sound and touch are worthless objects in a man,

The elemental-Ātman attached to them remembers not the

highest world."

In another passage of the same Upaniṣad, a king having lost his kingdom is

doing penance in the forest. He complains to a sage he meets there, bowing to

him in reverence (touching his feet with his head), about the suffering in a

perishable life. The body is built of base and disgusting parts; it is affected by

pleasure and anger, by hunger and thirst, old-age and death and by being

away from obtaining what is desired–almost word for word, the expressions

here coincide with those probably used generally by the Buddhistic monks in

their solemn credo.52—"what is the use of this enjoyment? We see that this

whole world is perishable like the flies, gnats and other insects, like shrubs

and trees, growing and decaying. But what do I talk of them? There are others,

greater; mighty wielders of bow, many of them rulers like Sudyumna, Bhūr-

yumṇa, Indradyumṇa . . . They surrendered their glories before the eyes of their

families and have passed away from this world . . . But what do I talk of them?

There are other things: the great oceans are drying up, the mountains are

falling, the pole star is moving from its place, the wind-ropes (holding the

stars) are cutting, the earth is submerging and the gods are disappearing from

their places. In such a world, what is the use of pleasure? Where have we seen

a person returning to this world again and again satiated by pleasure? There-

fore rescue me! I fell in this world like a frog in a dark well!"

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155

It is not frequent, but these texts remind us that that the Puruṣa is infatuated

and he succumbs to temptation in his involvement with the world. It is indeed

"pleasure, suffering and confusion" (p. 151) what the world offers him as food.

One is also reminded of the words with which Yama in the Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad

begins his teachings. It is said that the other is better, the other is more dear,

and the one who seeks what is better, what is more dear, misses the goal. Has

this not happened to Puruṣa? Is not Prakṛti a great charming enchantress?

Let us refer to the Epic. There is a section in the philosophical part of the great

poem. In fact, it is one of the climaxes: a monologue of the spirit caught in

the realm of the nature, infatuated by its magic, roaming about in Saṃsāra.

It awakens to the knowledge of its misery, to the longing for its true home. It

says:

"Woe to me the unwise, I, ensnared in blind illusion,

Went into person after person, submerged in existence as before.

That Imperishable alone is related to me. I can be only there,

Resembling it, and becoming one with it. As it is, so am I...

Not any more far, I approach it, if I, without change, also

Do not allow myself to be deluded by phantoms of changing realms.

And yet, it is not her fault; it is my fault alone.

I, who without looking, approached her blindly and clung to her."

Deliverance

How is this fatal bondage got rid off? How is the entrapped Self freed?

If we were to look for a doctrine of the most ancient Sāṃkhya on this in

the Upaniṣads, then we would be facing a peculiar problem. What is said

there on this question is quite predominantly in the language of the Yoga

rather than that of the Sāṃkhya.

We shall have soon to deal more in detail with the Yoga and its relation-

ship with the Sāṃkhya. It may be noted that Yoga aspired for deliverance

with the help of elaborate and planned meditations. It appears to be probable,

if not certain, that Yoga was not, as this could be presumed from the contents

of those Upaniṣads, an integral part of the Sāṃkhya from the beginning, a

practical part along with the theoretical. But it appears that they were original-

ly two different doctrines, though they showed inclination to merge. It was

obvious for Sāṃkhya to accept into its doctrine of deliverance a form adapted

from the Yoga; on the part of the Yoga, the system of terminology of the

Sāṃkhya was found to be suitable in imparting didactic clarity and expression

for its hazy world of ideas which could not be easily expressed in words. But

if we take into consideration the line of development in which the Sāṃkhya

is rooted—between the old Upaniṣads on the one hand and the classical

Sāṃkhya on the other—we shall probably find that the Yoga was depicted as

one element among other elements within its doctrine of deliverance. Thus

the questions raised here about the relevant Sāṃkhya-doctrine simply not

being absorbed in the Yoga is rightly justified.

Now it cannot be denied that even many of expressions of our sources do not

directly show a distinct characteristic of the Yoga. We would like to look to

these expressions for support in our search for the specific Sāṃkhya-doctrine.

But they appear to be so much closely connected with the Yoga-system that

there are doubts about their utilisation for Sāṃkhya as distinguished from

Yoga. All the same, the texts appear to be providing us, at least, with a few

examples in answering our question. The point of view just given, the position

of the old Sāṃkhya between the older and the later phases of development

known to us, offers us a useful clue to investigate these examples.

Obviously there is a firm conviction, like correspondingly of the older

speculation, that it is the knowledge of the Puruṣa that decides on the deliver-

ance. It is said in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad with respect to the Supreme

Being taught there (see below) and identified with the "god":

"One who knows him breaks the fetters of death"...

Those who know this, become immortal."

In fact, a yogin could also say this. It is even probable that a yogin really

speaks here. Concentrations and ecstasies of the Yoga were for him the path

to that highest knowledge. But the speciality of the Sāṃkhya was that the

importance was given, besides doing such exercises whose significance cannot

be denied, to the pure work of thought, to the knowledge of the principles of

being and happening and their mutual relationship, as we find this in the

classical Sāṃkhya. " 'Brahman is', thus he said who knew the science of

Brahman. 'This is the door to Brahman' says he who had cast off all evil by

austerity. 'Om! The greatness of Brahman!' says he who well-yoked (prepared)

austerity (su-yuktah) meditates untiringly on it. Therefore, by knowlegge, by austerity

and by meditation is Brahman apprehended".33 It is indeed obvious that the

work of speculation from which the Sāṃkhya-doctrine has emerged could not

have been done without being convinced of the great significance of rational

knowledge for getting deliverance. It is at the same time not surprising that

voices are heard which have to say something different:

"He is not to be apprehended by instruction,

Nor by intellect, nor by much learning,

He is to be apprehended only by the one whom He chooses,

To such a one, the Ātman reveals his own person."

This clear pronouncement of predestination should not be extenuated by

consideration that he who gives pardon and he who receives it are in reality

one and the same. The Yoga-tinge can be recognised at the root of this verse.

It does not reject Yoga as it rejects knowledge.54 Like the deity showing

mercy to an ascetic doing penance, the Ātman predestinates him—it may be

understood in this sense—who seeks to see the Ātman in himself in right

concentration and absorption of mind.

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But if the knowledge is asked for, then it is said in no uncertain terms that a distinction has to be made. The old conception that it is important to find the hidden is developed to saying that it is necessary to overcome the confusion of illusory resemblance. Puruṣa is hidden for the ignorant among the creations of Prakṛti appearing to be intelligent. It is a question of distinguishing him from these. Or it can be said better that it is a question of Puruṣa distinguishing himself from them. We have mentioned earlier (p. 152) a passage from an Upaniṣad where it is said that the Puruṣa loses his freedom when he says about the existence in nature, "I am he; this is mine." Accordingly a solution ensues in which he distinguishes himself from what appeared to him wrongly as his ego. The Epic speaks often and emphatically of this. Puruṣa and Prakṛti are as different as fish and the water in which it swims, as the fly and the udum-bara tree on which it sits. Puruṣa is awakened to the knowledge, "I am different; she is different". By doing so he desires purity. Knowledge of this alienation is simultaneously—it may appear to us to be rather a rash step—doing away with the alien. "Therefore", it is said in one of the most famous passages of the Upaniṣad, "Let him abide without determination, conception and self-conceit. That is the mark of deliverance. That is the pathway that leads to the Brahman. Here is the opening of the door that would reach one to the farthest shore from darkness."

Retrospect and Prospects for Further Development

Let us review the basic features of these trends of thoughts. They are, in many respects, in the midst of the older and the later period. Tendencies pointing to the future are seen. They lead to later developments determined itself. It would be proper to cast at least a glance also on them. Culmination reached by a movement helps one to understand the movement better.

The separation of the two monstrous powers and realms, the mundane and the super-mundane, a legacy of the older period, becomes more and more distinct, the more the thinking is concerned with it. The predicates and functions accorded to each of these basic entities are entirely attributed to the one in constantly increasing degree and entirely denied to the other. What the one is, the other is not. The old Ātman, per se a principle of permanent existence, became, in a certain contrast with it, an initiator of all movement of life in the world. The world that was created was too little cultivated by thinking, too deeply pushed into the background, to be able to take up this function. That has now changed. That contrast does not appear to be any longer endurable. And now the second principle has acquired power which enables it to step by the side of the Puruṣa, a symbol of "being", as a representative of becoming and movement.

When we use the catchword being and becoming for the antithesis between Puruṣa and Prakṛti as it is developed here, we are not restricting ourselves to what the most ancient Sāṃkhya-sources express,55 but we certainly understand the pertinent meaning. The Puruṣa, to remain immortal, has necessarily

to be sat in accordance with his true nature. The becoming is in the foreground in the image of Prakṛti and the Guṇas. Becoming is seen by the Indian pessimism as something that is above all, unstable and perishable.

Thus the intellectual, following the course of thought to which the idea of Ātman began to move, rather only began to move, identified itself with the being, and the unintellectual with the becoming and happening.

Materialisation of Intellectual Happening

A question is raised here. Where is the place for happening in such contradictions?

Attempts to solve this problem are already seen in the Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad. It is clear that the movements of thinking and wishing, just because they are movements and because the play of Guṇas is manifest in their ebb and tide, in their darkness and brightness, are considered as unintellectual. We have therefore this idea in that Upaniṣad, probably a much older idea, that intellect, mind and ego-principle and with them the functions of determination, conception and self-conceit, originate from the Prakṛti. The Upaniṣad appears to be expressing the thought that the intellectual significance was bestowed upon them with the phrase that they are "food": "Their enjoyer is without Guṇas (i.e., the Puruṣa); but because he is an enjoyer, it follows that he possesses intelligence".53 We have obviously before us mainly, if not in a perfect and complete form, the later Sāṃkhya-doctrine: the purely material phenomena of wishing and thinking are illuminated by the light of Puruṣa and thus appear to be elevated to the intellectual from their own sphere—till the Puruṣa perceiving the strangeness of this strange and doing an act of thinking while refusing to think says about all that: "This is not I."

A speculation depending upon the things could scarcely have derived an impetus from them to divide the intellectual movement into a movement here and an intellect there, everything consisting of an intellectual substance here and of an intellect there to which that substance is confronted as a stranger.

But now a thoughtful treatment of reality has been developed here unmistakably into a treatment of thoughts on reality. One is pushed there from a consequence to a consequence. It is all the same whether we, on our part, are friendly with each of them: the whole phenomenon shows most clearly a strengthening of thought and an increasing capability and need of extending again and again the lines which were once drawn.

Action and suffering, like the movement of thought and the phenomena of volition cannot be any more inherent in the Puruṣa.

The older conception of Sāṃkhya had allowed the Puruṣa to climb down to life in the world with a certain candour. He ruled and worked there; he also suffered there, when the movement in which he was entangled, tore him away, the waves over him knocked him down. This could not continue forever. He became more and more gruff as the one stationary opposed to the movement in the world. That only he possesses intelligence was emphasised as he posses-

ses only intelligence. Thus the one who was all powerful had to give up his

involvement in the material world. He became a mere spectator.57 To express

it with an analogy of the later Sāṃkhya: a cripple beside the powerfully

moving, but the blind Prakṛti. His high rank sentenced him to passivity. He

was elevated beyond life so that he could be excluded from perishableness

and death: life is nothing but death. All this means that both the antagonists,

Prakṛti and Puruṣa, could now impossibly, so to say, come to blows with each

other any more immediately as was once imagined. An action appearing so

violent had to disintegrate itself in a mere semblance of it before the more

profoundly intruding consideration.

Materialisation of Suffering

What became now of the reality of suffering in this constellation of

thoughts? The cause of suffering, the perishableness, was now placed only in

the Prakṛti, and the capacity to perceive the suffering in the Puruṣa: the

division between the two, did it not cut off inevitably a feasibility of under-

standing the suffering?

What we see here now first is only so much that the immanent consequence

was understood early. And that is: the one sorrowfully bound is in reality not

the Puruṣa at all. The suffering—as a pure phenomenon of matter—for which

the question how it can reach consciousness remains unanswered—affects

only the image of Puruṣa in the sphere of Prakṛti (p. 151f.). It did not affect

him himself.

The first sentence revealing this is found in the Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad:58

"Some say here: it is Guṇa which by force of developing differentiation of

Prakṛti comes to bind the Self with determination.59 And that deliverance

results from the destruction of the fault of determination." The author himself

rejects this doctrine; he adheres to the view that it is not the Guṇa, i.e., an

entity of nature that is bound and delivered, but the Puruṣa. But what is

rejected here is then enforced. The natural conception is turned upside down,

but the consequence of the trend of thoughts adopted once leads one really

there. The Epic describes Puruṣa as

"Without beginning, limitless, endless, seeing everything,

free from suffering."

And the Kārikā says in the classical period, quite in the sense of that doctrine

rejected by the Upaniṣads:

"He will not be thus delivered, nor bound,

The Puruṣa, and it is not he who wanders.

The wanderer, the delivered, the bound is

The Prakṛti. She now clings to this, now to that"—

where there are besides these still some more expressions adhering to the old,

natural trends. They are indifferent to subtilities and let the Puruṣa get the

deliverance: like the milk of the cow becoming active, albeit unknowingly, to

feed the calf, the Prakṛti becomes active for the sake of the deliverance of the

Puruṣa. Like the men who do their work to satisfy their desires, the Prakṛti

does her work to redeem the Puruṣa.

If one, however, adheres to the other progressive view, then it is quite

clear, how here the release one sought for the Puruṣa, had been so intensively

unusual, had been so firmly anchored in his innermost essence, that it was no

more comprehensible how he could have been ever bound. That was certainly

not the intention of thinking.

Then naturally a question remained: how the conscious feeling of suffering

actually consistently present and also indispensable for the system is realised

in the unintellectuality of the Prakṛti.

If it was found inevitable to exclude Puruṣa in the structure of the objective

phenomenon of suffering, then one could not dispense here with the isolated

subject where we are concerned with the subjective side of this phenomenon.

The alternative found out of this difficulty is intimated to us by what was

remarked above (p. 157) about the structure of conscious thinking and

volition. A veering between reality and appearance. Just enough reality to give

inevitable recognition to the fact of suffering as the one that is consciously

felt—or, shall we say, to obtain it surreptitiously? And enough of mere appea-

rance, to escape the inexplicable things presuming real suffering in the face of

the principles of the system. Compromises, shuffling of difficulties from one

point to the other: that is part and parcel of the character of these specula-

tions. But these speculations are, as a matter of fact, quite far from giving an

impression—what was expected of them—that they have, so to say, emerged

from a void and are perfected just in one stroke.

The Kārikā teaches that the unintellectual Liṅga60 becomes "so to say,

intellectual" through its "association" with the Puruṣa. This was once accep-

ted as a fact. And the inactive Puruṣa—in reality Guṇas alone are active—

becomes "so to say, an agent"; one could say, so to say, a sufferer.

Such "so to say" must bridge the gap, make what impossible possible,

pass over the purely objective, unconscious suffering taking place in the un-

intellectual to the real of the conscious. A simile we often come across, if not

in the Kārikā, but later, illustrates how it is meant: the objective suffering

inherent in the creations of the Prakṛti is transferred apparently to the Puruṣa

like the reflection of the red flower which is transferred to a pure crystal when

it is brought closer to it. Or another simile:

"As in the swaying of the ocean surface the moon appears

swaying to the look,

So the seer, the Self apparently assumes the quality of the

Non-Self."

It is remarkable what great role befalls here so often to the similes. They

are contrived cleverly and ingeneously. These similes of the later Sāṃkhya do

160

not reach up to the simple depth of those of the old Upaniṣads. There is too

much wisdom in them. In letting their pleasing similes be a factor in the deve-

lopment of the thought, they continue with the fantasy unknowingly even

beyond serious passages.61 It can be said in the example before us that initial-

ly only a third of the crystal appears red and the swaying of the moon to the

beholder of the crystal and the flower, of the moon and the ocean. Where is

such beholder of Puruṣa and Prakṛti? It can even be objected that this is, to a

certain extent, a lame comparison: the crystal is unintellectual but the Puruṣa

is intellectual so that the false appearance which deludes only one-third in the

case of the crystal, can delude him here himself. It is possible, the author of

the simile would answer thus. But does it also not remain incomprehensible,

now as before, in spite of all comparisons, that in Him, who has altogether

withdrawn Himself from all happening, only a reflection of happening and

suffering—of course, to certain extent just only the happening—finds entry

and has a power to produce suffering and affliction of such illusion in his

pure light?

We shall come back to the question how now the image of deliverance is

formed from this suffering when the reality of suffering, so to say, had taken

refuge in a comedy of errors. But it is necessary beforehand to think particu-

larly of a profoundly effective innovation which has substantially contributed

in transferring the original Sāṃkhya-doctrine into its classical type.

Plurality of Puruṣa

What the Puruṣa inherited from the ancient past was this: he remained as

the One above the plurality of the world-activity. There came a period when

the fascinating power of the motif of unity began to wear out. Once the all-

encompassing, all-dominating super-greatness ofthe One had to be there so

that a rescue could be found in it from the mechanism of plurality. Now where

the intellectual was not any more strictly subject to perishableness, a seeker

could get deliverance through other means. Now doubts could be raised

about the doctrine of unity. The old path-finders in their zeal had not cared

to pay any attention to them.

The Puruṣa of the older Sāṃkhya is secluded from the creatures of the

Prakṛti in accordance with his nature. But defying this seclusion and losing

himself in sorrowful bondage here and there, with these or those creatures, he

returns to himself now here and now there. Thus He who should have been

the One, divided himself in countless careers. His attitude with respect to the

most decisive of his dilemmas, of his bondage and liberation, is quite unpre-

dictable. Can deliverance and non-deliverance be united thus? Maitrāyaṇa

Upaniṣad (II, 5) already spoke of that. In fact, the concept can be traced back

to much older period (p. 75); it is that the Imperishable is involved each time

only with one part of its being. Was that not an expedient over which one was

driven out further? The division was obviously caused by the nature with her

infinite variety. Did not a stricter separation of the two principles make it

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161

more and more difficult to ascribe such an influence to the Puruṣa? If the parts

of one Puruṣa were to fall once far asunder, why not then presume many

Puruṣas?

It is understandable that such or similar contemplations contributed in

honouring again the point of view of a simple experience, i.e., the conscious-

ness of the plurality of spirits. This is silenced for long by the exuberance of

the mystics drunk by the idea of all-unity. We see thus the question emerging

in the Epic:62 are there many Puruṣas or is there only one? It was answered

here that the one Puruṣa is the origin of many, that those, when they become

guṇa-less, end in him, who is guṇa-less. An alternative was sought, but it could

not solve the problem in the long run. The same section of the Mahābhārata

shows that even then the trend of the thought had gone a decisive step further

beyond answering the question. A sage speaks to a prince:

"Sāṃkhya and Yoga teach plurality of Puruṣas in this world.

They deny that there is only one Puruṣa, O descendant of Kuru."

With that we arrive at the point of view of the classical Sāṃkhya.

A trace of innovation—as a matter of fact, a fundamental innovation—was

rightly sought in its leading text, the Kārikā. And this has been accomplished.

The Kārikā speaks constantly of the "Puruṣa" in singular; it is clear from the

wording of many sentences that plurality was certainly not thought of. It

adheres to the customary phraseology. And this is indeed facilitated by the

configuration of thoughts. There dominates such a monotonousness in the

plurality of Puruṣas, free of qualities, these individuals without individuality,

in spite of the distinctive behaviour of the Prakṛti playing around them, that

the "Puruṣa" can appear very well as a fully valid representative of all

Puruṣas.63

The doctrine of the plurality of Puruṣas, in fact present in the mind of the

author without any doubt and always, is expressed, above all, in one verse.

The verse was sung in obscurely succinct diction:

"From the distribution of the birth, death

And organs, and also from a non-simultaneous work,

Plurality of spirits is inferred.

Further, from the contradictions of the mark of three Guṇas."

This obviously means: if one and the same spirit were to be opposed to all

the bodies, then birth and death would not be understood, i.e., the connection

of the spirit with a new body and severing of such connection, does not take

place everywhere at the same time, so also that here these, there those material

organs belong to the spirit. So also it would be incomprehensible that not all

creatures move or rest at the same time. Finally, also the opposition of the

Puruṣa to the Prakṛti which has three Guṇas leads to the same result: she

exists only in one number; thus he must be present in many numbers as

opposed to her. The last argument is obviously artificial. It typically shows

how both the principles were surely found as opposed to each other in every

respect. I suppose, the argument shows on the other hand, really an approxi-

mate direction in which the thinking has progressed to the extent of destroying

the unity of Puruṣa. How the atmosphere has changed since the period of the

old Upaniṣads! There every thought was focused on the Self merging with

the infinity and flowing through it beyond all barriers and getting inundated

by it: “That you are!” Here a discreet criticism of work. It cannot ignore the

separation of I and you, and thus it recognises this separation patiently. Here

the nature, there the individual souls: the thinking was now only concerned

with this. The universal soul with its unlimited expanses has disappeared.

The universe is de-deified.—

It must now be finally found out, as already mentioned, how the image of

deliverance one obtained was formulated with the changed conception of

suffering—and, it must now be added, with the changed reorientation of the

doctrine of the Puruṣa just described.

Now the distinction between the Puruṣa and the Prakṛti is understood.

With that the play of responses between the two was ended. Now what does

become of them?

In view of the dogma of plurality of the Puruṣas, the question can obvious-

ly only mean this: what happens to the one Puruṣa for whom the deliverance

has been attained, and to the Prakṛti in so far as she was just opposed to this

Puruṣa?

There is no doubt that the Puruṣa goes into the quietude in his state of

solitude, henceforth unmoved by the flickering glimmer of happening and

perishableness. The existence of Ātman exalted over all the conscious existence

in its own empire returns here again, as once Yājñavalkya taught it in his

discourse. But only that it is no more the Supreme Being, but an individual

spirit that has withdrawn into itself as a transcendental anchorite. There is a

verse of a later poet on it:64

“When on the surface of a mirror, no mountain,

No valley, no being is reflected, then the mirror-power

Abides in one's being alone.

The solitude of the seer, who sees nothing

Resembles it, when the maze of appearances,

When I and you and the world have disappeared.”

The Deliverance in the Later Form of the Doctrine; Prakṛti Doing Her Work

for the Puruṣa

And the Prakṛti? It should be expected that she will now continue her

unharmed movement in the darkness of her unintellectuality. It is in her

nature to fulfil it.

The Sāṃkhya did not draw this conclusion.

A petty feature had entered the image of co-existence and conflict of the

mundane and the super-mundane. It contributed, constantly emerging in

Sāṃkhya Kārikā in bringing down to the level of the fragile what was once

considered as great. The consequences of this trend are felt here.

The old conviction that the Ātman alone possessed the highest power and

prominence gave way, in accordance with the taste of the later period, to new

concepts. Puruṣa became in them a Sultan-like lazy ruler, and Prakṛti became

an untiring, dextrous and a self-less maid-servant. For the sake of Puruṣa,

for the sake of every single Puruṣa—these are considered here as those to be

liberated (comp. p. 157 f.)—, she fulfils the work of her development, let every

Liṅga (p. 151) take up its changing role like an actor, “for a stranger's purpose,

as if it were happening for one's own purpose”,

“providing help in many ways

The one the helpful to the one not the helpful.”

Thus she exerts herself so that the final goal of the course of things in the

world is attained, so that the redeeming distinction helping the Puruṣa to

attain the purity of his absolute being emerges. A question becomes now

evident: why have the events in the world to work their way from eternities

without any beginning to provide Puruṣa with the worst-possible service, to

detain him in that calamitous bond which has then to be dissolved so labori-

ously? It is once said in the Kārikā that the union takes place, creation comes

into existence so that the knowledge of the separation of the Puruṣa and the

Prakṛti can be obtained: in other words: misfortune takes place in the interest

of the one who is unfortunate so that he can be helped out of it. . . .

The image we have of the attitude of the Prakṛti on her reaching the goal

is now explained from such concepts. Again, similes describe it:

“When a dancer reveals herself to a group of onlookers,

She ends her dance.

So the nature: when she reveals herself to the spirit,

She steps back and disappears”—

and further:

“There is nowhere a being as tenderly sensitive

As the Prakṛti; this is my opinion.

When she notices: ‘he has seen me’,

She does not reveal herself to the Puruṣa's look again.”

In fact, there is too much empathy for the blind, the unspiritual, as there

was too much purposiveness of the same unspiritual Prakṛti that she knew to

place her work at the service of the Puruṣa and adapt herself to his purpose.

Where did in all this the bitter earnestness and need of the world-suffering

remain? A courtesan entertaining a despot looking at her, a woman withdrawing herself ashamed by the looks of a man: it is seen how this thinking looses the right, full force in the gracious piquancy of such similes. They are artistic, subtle, elegant, and yet careless with respect to obfuscations and contradictions. The masses of thoughts were thus built and re-built.

But in this process, a tragedy has assumed much the form of a ballet.

THE YOGA

The Beginnings of Yoga

Yoga appears in the literature along with the Sāṃkhya-doctrine and closely connected with it. It seeks to realise the trends of thoughts of speculation in practices of physical and mental discipline. The discipline induces methodically mystic conditions.

We have already discussed Yoga above (p. 83). Its traces appear to be present already in the older Upaniṣads.65 In fact, a cosmogonic myth of the Ṛgveda gives a name to a primordial being appearing there. This name points out to a body-posture of an ascetic one comes across in the technique of the Yoga, sitting with folded legs, soles turned upwards:66 of course, that is obviously not a proof for intrinsically impossible supposition that there was real Yoga even in the Ṛgvedic period, but only for the fact, what is even otherwise obvious, that there was a connection between the Yoga and the essential features of primitive practices of austerity of the past.

Yoga is also mentioned in those Upaniṣads which also discussed the Sāṃkhya for the first time. They reveal the contents of the doctrines in their connection with one another. It is significant that one of these Upaniṣads mentions also Yoga where the earliest mention of the name Sāṃkhya is found in it, and that too in close connection with it. Similarly one of the earliest evidences for the name of this system is that god is named there as the “cause” of the world which is “known through Sāṃkhya and Yoga”.67 Likewise, Sāṃkhya and Yoga are seen closely connected in the sources of the Epic and finally in the literature portraying the classical forms of both the systems. We shall discuss this connection later in more detail. It is also important for the pre-history of Buddhism.

It can be easily understood how Yoga has emerged from a situation to which the trends of thoughts described above have progressed. New, loftiest tasks were placed before the religious knowledge and action. It could not be sufficient to think of the otherworld one discovered only from a distance, as also to calculate the formulas expressing its features. What could not be seen had to be seen to enjoy it blissfully, to get a foothold, released from all the mundane impediments, in its plenum and void. What was needed was stronger and more concentrated endeavours than those comprising the homeless life of a beggar of the old Upaniṣads. The dark powers offered their help. They warranted from ages, fullest, most real certainty of mastering supernatural visions,

supernatural influences, of an intercourse with supernatural powers: the magic power of austerity (Tapas). As god was felt within oneself with the help of Tapas, similarly, one had to succeed with the otherworldly, absolute Self. It was now not the priest alone, but also the magician who stood all too close to the thinker of the Upaniṣads not to have paved this way. All too close underlay the heights of speculation, the obscure image of the world in which natural and magical happening surged in a muddled, confused and gloomy manner. Actual achievements succeeding in the field of self-hypnosis intervened decisively: the way between the absorption in the fleeting phantoms of the Brahman speculation and hypnotic states could not be far. And thus the Tapas, literally “heating” was sublimated. It adapted itself to the new problem, to Yoga, meaning “adaptation”. It is significant for the meaning of the word that one of the earliest texts of the Upaniṣads on Yoga68 was introduced by a series of Vedic verses all beginning with a form of the verb “adapt” (yuj--) and solicit adaptation of the mind to the pious action of the “god Impeller” (Savitar). This art of inner adaptation is focused on the goal to which the old practices of austerity were basically related: the goal of releas-ing the spirit from this world.

The older Upaniṣads had found that such deliverance is, above all, realised in dreamless sleep. Now one sought something less common, something more artistic that could grant more glittering, spiritual riches. “The fourth” beyond the three states of waking, dreaming and dreamless sleeping.

The effort for that began, above all, on the physical plane. The breath had to be controlled. And on mental plane, by passifying, supressing imagination that was allowed to run amok.

"The oneness of breath and mind and likewise of the senses, And reliquishment of all senses: this is what is called Yoga."69

Discipline of the Breath, Body Postures, Mastering the Senses

The great role that has befallen here to the discipline of the breath appears to be explained, as it is common in such cases, by concurrence of different motifs.70 A considerable part of physical movements signifying restlessness and involvement in material life in the world, could be eliminated without much ado. Of the remaining, breathing was the most central. From ages, breath was considered as seat of life. The Brāhmaṇa-texts dealing with it are full of rites. They have quite confused theories dealing with breath and the complicated system of different forms attributed to it. These popular or sacrificial-magical views were extended then to metaphysical riddles on breath as a principle of life in the world. Added to that was the old ritualistic custom. One knew to hold breath as a protection against the danger of harmful powers active in the vicinity. It was further considered as producing heat, was represented as a form of austerity (Tapas, actually heating). Thus the idea of purification and atonement was associated with it in many

ways. It was further believed, and not without any reason, that there was a

connection between the tempo of breathing and that of the imaginative facul-

ty. Finally, the obscurity of the activity of brain effectuated by insufficient

breathing, reaching into hypnosis, was observed as the exaltation of mind in

a higher sphere in the sense of asceticism. Thus it is understandable that the

yogin sees a powerful medium in reducing and strictly regulating, his breath

to bring down the intensity of his life in this world and to create peace in the

midst of its gloomy movement in which the prospect of the otherworld, the

way there, was opened.

We do not know it positively, but we may suppose that Yoga, in its early

period itself, advised against unnecessary self-torment, and particularly fas-

tening that made one weak: the food should be moderate and simple, but suffi-

cient. Obviously, the effort was to preserve strength for difficult work one had

before oneself, to keep away paralysing discomfort. Altogether corresponding

to this purpose, a conduct of life was made a duty in what one did and what

one did not, which worked towards avoiding passion and defilement, and

towards peace, serenity and elevation of one's mind.

Thus the yogin seated himself down for his mystic action, in a surrounding

as it is described by the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad:71

"Let one perform the Yoga in a place level and pure.

Where there are no pebbles, sand, fire, sound and pond.72

Nothing should be painful to the eye,

in a hidden retreat (full of caves) and protected from wind,

be the place."

There developed in the course of time a complicated doctrine with numereous

postures of sitting—the lotus seat, the svastika-seat, etc. One sat there in such

postures. One pressed the tip of the tongue against the palate. Now one

thought of fixing the eyes on the tip of the nose; the hypnotic effect of such

staring, of the convergence of lines of look is indeed well-known. One practis-

ed control and lowering of breathing, further the withdrawal of senses from

the objects: for the creator has opened the openings of the body only out-

wards, and thus one sees from nature towards outside; the wise man, however,

looks inside to find immortality there. He avoids contact with the objects of

senses like a celibate "who does not touch women fallen in love with him in

an empty house". It was important to fix the restlessly fluctuating organ of

thinking on one point. The organs are steadied, says the Epic, like a fish to

be killed. The meditation was directed to the mystic word Om. Its one syllable

comprises all powers of sacredness in it as an essence of all essences. Naciketas

is taught by Yama:

"The word which all the Vedas rehearse

And which all austerities proclaim

To which a pious man's life strives,

That word to you I briefly proclaim:

It is Om. . . .

This word, it is the best support;

This word, it is the highest support.

Those knowing this support,

Are elevated in the world of Brahman."

And another Upaniṣad says, "As a spider mounting on its thread reaches a

free space, indeed, does the meditator, mounting on the word Om, obtains

independence."

This is significant for the last gentle connection of these trends of thoughts

with the cult of the old sacrifice and also at the same time, for severing this

connection. The sacred word of the Yoga is the "yes" or the "amen" of the

sacrificial litanies. But the colourful worlds of the Veda and sacrifice have now

disappeared in the abyss of one syllable. . . .

Meditations

There is often a talk about the meditation of the yogin in the phraseology

of the Sāṃkhya-doctrine. One should let the lower faculties of the soul end

up, step by step, into the higher ones and bring them to rest. One should, it is

said in one of the earliest passages of the Upaniṣad pertinent here, supress

speech and mind (manas) in the Understanding-Self (i.e., in the intellect,

buddhi); and this in the "Great Self"; this finally in the "Tranquil Self".73

Elsewhere—we must inevitably combine the statements of different texts

here—meditations characterised by the catchwords "friendship" (with all

creatures), "sympathy", "happiness" and "serenity" are mentioned. They

passify the thinking organ and prepare the ground for exalted meditation.

The older sources of the Yoga do not mention them, but their agreement with

the ascetic practices of Buddhism fixes their age and lends them importance for

research.

One Upaniṣad describes :

"Fog, smoke, sun, fire, wind,

Fire-flies, lightning, rock-crystal and moonshine."74

These are the preliminary appearances which are a sure sign of success.

Now the doctrine takes up the central position in the theory of medita-

tions, at first of the four gradually increasing steps of "conscious" concen-

tration, then of the "unconscious" which is exalted over the other as a pinna-

cle. It is true that the earliest sources do not speak of these. In view of their

fragmentary character, it cannot be deduced that the relevant concepts were

missing at that time. Here we have also important Buddhistic evidences to

prove the old age of that doctrine, at least in its main features. These evidences

will be discussed later. The classical system of Yoga characterises these medi-

tations in their order to the point that there remains in them the thought

which is directed at first towards the gross objects, then only towards the

subtile objects. Then comes the feeling of joy and finally only the feeling of

being 'I'. Once that has disappeared, then the 'highest concentration' is

attained.

A memory of a nameless and thoroughly forceful happiness speaks with

a convincing power how such scholastic distinctions also have been formed in

the individual from the utterances of those who experienced these states. They

trace back essentially to auto-hypnotism. All the earth's gravity is gone from

the one who has reached those heights. All barriers fall. In the depths of one's

own self one sees him who

"is hard to see, abiding in the secret place,

Who lives in the cave, the god, the primeval."

And it does not remain only with seeing. The seeing has transformed itself

into being one with what is seen. Beyond the immeasurable expanses of ether,

the spirit floats in the void which is fuller than all plenum. It is a complete

quietude, a profound and luminous quietude. A light thus burns at a place,

calm—the Indian poet returns again and again to this comparison—, un-

moved, the flame soaring upwards. Can such images let the uninitiated anti-

cipate it? Words do not explain it to him. One Upaniṣad says:

"With mind's stains washed away by meditation,

What may his joy be who has entered Ātman

Is impossible to describe in words.

One must grasp it with one's inner organ."—

Fruits of Yoga: Miraculous Powers

What are now the fruits of this action and experience for the one who is

blessed?

It is clear that older and later concepts have got mixed up here. In fact,

baser aspirations appearing to us to be burlesque have got mixed up with the

loftier ones.

On a lower level, the yogin can look forward to a comfortable, undisturbed

feeling of well-being and to the soundness of physical functions.

"Healthiness, lightness, freedom from desire,

Clearness of countenance and pleasantness of voice,

A good odour, scanty excretion and urine:

These are known as the first fruits of Yoga."

Further—the earlier texts are silent on them, but the concepts are doubtlessly

ancient—the yogin obtains miraculous powers like the ability of making him-

self small and invisible or of becoming as big as infinity, multiplying his own

body and remembering his early births and many more skills of this sort.

Something different, something real has got mixed up with these fictitious

merits at one place. Early—we do not know, unfortunately, how early—the

Indian ingenuity has succeeded in discovering besides auto-hypnotism, also

a hypnotism directed towards the others. It was accepted among the mira-

culous powers of the yogin as 'the mind entering the body of the other'. The

great Epic narrated several stories dealing obviously with hypnotism. Thus a

Brahmana pupil, Vipula protects the wife of his teacher who was away, by

hypnotism against the advances of god Indra.

He sits next to her and

"Uniting the ray of her eyes with those of his two eyes

He entered her body as the blowing of the wind enters space."

The god approaches and sees the hypnotiser sitting next to the woman or

rather his body

"appearing like a painted picture, unmoved, the eyes fixed."

The woman wants to stand up before the guest, but all her senses and powers

are chained 'with the fetters of Yoga'. She wants to talk: but her language 'is

turned away from her'. Finally she speaks out an unimportant word, not in

the simple language of a woman, but in excellent Sanskrit, as an exorcist would

speak. He leaves her when the danger is over and 'enters his body again'.

These real or invented powers of the yogin have fundamentally nothing

to do with the predominant trend of thought of the Yoga. If he succeeds in

releasing his ego from the world, it cannot be foreseen in how far within this

world the play of causality should be subject to his omnipotence.

So also,

what interest he, the one who is released from this world, has on his part in

his omnipotence? It is clear and quite understandable that here just the

remnants of the unconquered primitive concepts play their role. As a matter

of fact, even then the true yogin does not give any importance to having

those advantages. Only the last goal is important for him.

Deliverance

This goal is deliverance. It is not imagined in a foreseeable future. The

power of Yoga progresses fast. An Upaniṣad says that a period of six months

is sufficient for a powerful effort.

When 'the material life of the yogin has

become quiet, when 'the functions of the soul have ceased and so this organ

becomes extinct in its source', like the fire, of fuel destitute, becomes extinct

in its own source', when the waves of perishableness do not wash away the

eternal self, but emits its light from unmoved quietude, then the separation is

accomplished of the one that was inseparable before. The Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad

says with a simile repeated in the Epic and also known to the Buddhists that

the man draws the inner self from his body 'like the pith from a reed'. 'When

he', it is said in another Upaniṣad, 'sees the self, more subtile than the subtile,

glittering, by supression of Manas (p. 117), then he becomes selfless by

seeing the self through his self. Because of being self-less, he is to be regarded

as incalculable without origin. This is the essence of deliverance; this is the

highest mystery." "It follows from the selflessnessness that he neither has joy nor

sorrow; he attains the absolute unity." "They (the sages) have gone to their

rest in the highest, worldless, unrevealed Brahman. There they are free from

their individual qualities and their individual distinctions, like various juices

of flowers having reached the condition of honey."—

Theoretical Principles. Relation to Sāṃkhya

The theoretical concepts connected with the instructions on such actions

with pronouncement of such rewards as such, need hardly have been parti-

cularly sharply and minutely developed. If one attributed to the Yoga a strong

dominance of the concept of causality, operating with a long chain of causes

and effects masterered by the yogin guiding the happening towards the goal of

deliverance with their help,

then it is possible that we have allowed ourselves

to be carried too far—as far as it concerns the older Yoga—by our tendency

of comparison with Buddhism. The theoretical conceptions found or supposed

to be found in the Yoga can be considered only partially as real fundaments

of ascetic practices. On the other part, they are rather later additions appended

generously and variably to Yoga by the ingenuity of the Indian thinkers.

There is no doubt that various trends ran side by side with reference to these

foundations or embellishments. We can recognise them rather in unequal

proportions in a tradition we cannot reach. Thus our estimation particularly

about the association of Yoga with the Sāṃkhya is based on a narrower basis

than we would like to wish.

There can, however, obviously be no doubt about the most important

fact: Yoga has its basis in the belief in an Absolute Being which is identified

with our Self and which must be released from its involvement in the world

and its suffering in the world. It was further mentioned that the Yoga is

completely close to the Sāṃkhya in the Upaniṣads (p. 166). In fact, it is the

Sāṃkhya which expresses this fundamental conception in a definite formula-

tion. The earliest important expressions of the Upaniṣads on the practice of

Yoga tend to use completely the terminology of the Sāṃkhya. Or seen from

the other direction, the earliest evidences on Sāṃkhya are completely connected

with the information on Yoga. With this state of affairs, it can be considered

as quite feasible that Sāṃkhya and Yoga must have formed one unit in the

beginning in this common appearance of the early tradition. Sāṃkhya must

have developed from the beginning a practical part called Yoga. And the need

to give a foundation to what was taught there may have—besides the motifs

developed from the preceding speculation—offered effective impetus in the

theoretical part of the analysis of the physical apparatus. But now a separation

is also seen besides the merging of both the doctrines. This can be easily recog-

nised in the Kāṭhaka and the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣads. Clear traces of this

separation can be seen in the Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad. They are further accen-

tuated in the later tradition. Was this separation possible because the halves of

the old whole became independent by assuming partially divergent features?

Or—this appears to be more possible—is the original altogether an indepen-

dent unit, and are there in both these Upaniṣads blending of both the units

and adaptation of Yoga to the conceptions of Sāṃkhya?

The fact is that

the Yoga-sūtras, the basic texts cf the classical Yoga, differ quite perceptibly

from the terminology of the Sāṃkhya; and where they conform to particular

Sāṃkhya-doctrines, they must have been more or less superficial innovations.

But that the real foundations of the doctrine delivered by the Yoga-sūtras

originate from quite an ancient period is certainly proved by its connection

with what the Buddhistic literature mentions.

It is true that the Epic repea-

tedly emphasises the agreement between Sāṃkhya and Yoga in their strength

of reaching the same goal, here by knowledge, there by ascetic practice. The

eagerness with which it is emphasised can point out to the fact that one did

not feel sure of the truth of that agreement and was only interested in not to

let so laudably striving thinkers and pious men contradict one another. But

in fact, the Epic says once quite frankly that the two systems were different.

This source names as a difference what emerges as such in the classical form

of the systems: that it is Yoga and not Sāṃkhya which acknowledges the

belief in god. We have to come back next in more detail to the role played by

the idea of god here. It may be emphasised here that Yoga appears to have

clung to the name Barhman among the terms for the Absolute Being for a

longer period and more faithfully than Sāṃkhya. This is the impression the

classical texts give, but which is also not quite so certain.

Nirvāṇa

It may be immediately mentioned in this context that a term for deliverance

is connected with the Brahman. This term belongs perhaps more to the langu-

age of Yoga than of Sāṃkhya: Nirvāṇa, i.e., extinction, literally "blowing

away". This word, not used in the later Sāṃkhya and Yoga, appears in the

Epic, perhaps not accidently, particularly readily in passages dealing with the

Yoga.

I shall quote here a verse from the Bhagvad Gītā to illustrate this:

"He who finds joy and happiness in his own self,

He who finds light in his own self,

The Yogin enters Nirvāṇa, becoming Brahman in Brahman."

Also let me quote another verse from a later (Kṣurikā—) Upaniṣad:

"Like the light that is burnt, disappears in the moment of extinction

(nirvāṇa)—

So also, the one who has burnt the fruits of work, the Yogin,

passes away."

172

As it is well-known, the Buddhistic as well as the Jaina literatures show that

the thought and the word of Nirvāṇa had widely spread around the period

of 500 b.c. among the sects of ascetics and had been extremely important.84

Did these sects borrow it from the Yoga?85 Many other derivations from

there support this supposition and it is not ruled out in view of the fragmen-

tary nature of our sources by the fact that texts using the expression Nirvāṇa

in connection with the concepts of the Yoga are considerably earlier to the

Buddhistic concepts. Yet so much is unknown to us of the religious and

philosophical developments of the 6th century that beside the Yoga enough

of references will remain untouched in which that word so powerfully enga-

ging the souls in need of salvation must have been created in a later as well as

in an earlier period.

Let us return from this digression to the question of relationship between

Yoga and Sāṃkhya to define briefly the probable result. The Yoga based on

the fundamental views of the Upaniṣadic speculations and more or less

similarly on those of the—perhaps the later?—Sāṃkhya, translated these

views into an ascetic practice and went its own way quite early, indeed from

the beginning itself, in its mode of expression and in many respects, in the

contents of its theory. Of course, in the process, the influences of the closely

related Sāṃkhya, so strongly felt by the intellectuals intensely affected it:

probably in a different way and with a different force in the manifold lines of

its obviously ramified development. It did not, so to say, easily cause a catas-

trophe, but it penetrated its world of ideas gradually and in repeated attempts.

These influences may have been more strongly emphasised just in many refe-

rences of the classical scientific literature, upon which we mainly depend, than

perhaps it would apply to many regions far beyond our knowledge.—

Position of the Yoga in the Spiritual Development of India

It is well-known that it is not only the yogin, who experiences and consci-

ously seeks the mystical seeing of the god or merging with the god or the

Absolute. This is also not only in India. What is Indian is at first the powerful

propogation rooted in special physical disposition in which these experiences

appear here. What is Indian is that the blowing or rather the blowing away of

the spirit was recorded here dutifully in the paragraphs of text books with

their divisions and sub-divisions, say, like all the ecstasies of enjoyment of

love by the Indian writers of erotic literature. Indian art and ingenuity is seen

in perfection with which the seekers succeeded in mastering as virtuoses

these conditions of mind actually according to a theory with the help of a

continuous practice in unprecedented physical and mental exertion. They

allowed themselves to be infused artistically, like—according to a Buddhistic

simile—a clever barber who forms the foam in such a way that it is completely

infused with greasiness. Where did these mystic powers take so paramountly

the possession of souls as in India? The Yoga tore away her young men from

the world. It appeared to elevate them to the heights of the Absolute Being,

173

to realise for their consciousness sunken in dreams, but at the same time

indescribably awake, a unity with the Being, to grant them the delights of a

drink from the metaphysical fountains, for which the longing had not been

as intense as among the Indians. Now onwards, a higher religious life was not

easily thinkable without the apposition of the Yoga. The yogin and the ideals

of the Yoga have risen from among the heroes and the ideals known to the

Indian folk-spirit, to one of the highest, nay, to the highest place of honour.

A PERSONAL GOD. THE ŚVETĀŚVATARA UPANIṢAD

The initial verses of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad used above quite often as a

source of the Sāṃkhya and the Yoga-doctrines give us an idea of the wealth

of questions, of the opinions fighting with one another, coming to the minds

of the seeking intellectuals during the period this text was composed. What is

the cause of existence, it is asked there. Whence do we come? By whom guided

do we move around between happiness and sorrow? Is time or nature the

grass root, necessity or accident, elements or intellect? The wise men engrossed

in contemplation, answers the text, saw the innate power of god, wrapped in

their own Guṇas. It is He as the One who precedes all powers.

The catchwords we come across here are found again with the Jainas and

in the Epic.86 We see the same questions being asked also in the old Buddhistic

literature. The answer given by the Upaniṣad is also given there: in it one

god ruling over the world is proclaimed. The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is the

only Upaniṣad among closely related texts which represents most emphatically

the belief in one god. Of course, it can hardly be considered as pre-Buddhistic.

However, the doctrine propogated by it is older than Buddhism, and there-

fore, it can be used as a source for trends of thoughts which were influential

in Buddha's times.

An idea of an all-dominating god, who, according to his nature, is com-

pletely different from the groups of gods of the old faith—who is just not a god,

but god—appears, as it is well-known, sporadically in very ancient times. A

famous hymn of the Ṛgveda asks:

"Who gives us life, who gives us strength,

The authoritative order, to which all gods listen,

The death is the immortality of the shadow:

Who is the god, to whom we must sacrifice?. . .

He who profoundly surveyed the waterfloods,

Those filled with strength, who create the sacrifice,

He, the only god among all gods:

Who is the god to whom we must sacrifice?"

Let us pass over the beginnings of the monotheistic faith, also over the

figure of the world-creator (literally "Master of creatures") Prajāpati. Let us

also be reminded only briefly of what has been mentioned above (p. 62)

about the remarkable appearance of personal features of Brahman-Ātman of

the old Upaniṣads. Here we have to focus our attention on a special constella-

tion where the idea of one god appears in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad.

It is, of course, not only here, but a similar thing also happened most

visibly within the scope of the field of our research in connection with specula-

tion and faith in god. This is observed by a researcher of a language coming in

contact with different languages. He noticed there that hybrid languages

originate, or one language gets adapted, in the mouth of other speakers and

in their language habits and thus undergoes profound changes. Similarly,

the self-confidence of those venturing to find the way through the labyrinth of

world and world-suffering with the help of their own knowledge, their own

strength, intermingled with the mode of thinking of those who clammered to

divine grace for help. The theoretical observation would have liked to keep

the two separated. But how could it have been possible in life and reality?

It appears that Yoga offered especially a favourable ground for such inter-

minglings. It steps indeed quite strongly in the foreground in the Śvetāśvatara

Upaniṣad.

The voice of scrutinising observation rejecting all contradictions was the

least heard in the Yoga. The mighty streams flooding the soul of the yogin

were striving for other goals than the one of clear consequence of thought.

Yoga taught on the one hand that one should strain one's every nerve most

strongly. But at the same time, it makes the seeker feel, on the other hand,

profoundly the immense difficulty of his venture, surely appeared to be going

hopelessly beyond the power of many. The yogin, the Epic says repeatedly,

resembles a man who climbs a staircase with a full container of oil in the

hand threatened by a man armed with a sword. He, however, unflinchingly

pays attention to his container only and reaches the top without spilling a

drop. Where it is a question of achieving something difficult, it is suggested

that one looks around for help, not to trifle away the proximity of gods with

which the atmosphere of ancient life of austerity was filled. Yet it was natural

that the appearance of the divine adapted itself to the air blowing more purely

here. And then there resulted, on its own, an association with the monotheistic

mode of thinking we have just mentioned. There had to be one god, who

stripped himself of the mythological grotesque creations, an Īśvara ("Ruler")

incarnating in being and action, pure, great ideas of omnipotence and mercy.

It is true—and it is also not surprising—this god could plunge again into the

old, spectre-filled darkness. He could assume the names Śiva, Viṣṇu, the

bearers of wild, voluptuous and grotesque ideas. . . .

Of the confused Upaniṣads, the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is the most con-

fused. Even that collision of heterogenous masses of thoughts touching its

last foundations, contributes to explaining this situation. In this—and it may

be added, sporadically and in lofty poetic beauty—the Upaniṣad is the right

predecessor of a text which has produced the classical expression for India in

a later age known for its intermingling of speculations and belief in god: the

Bhagvad Gītā.

A personal god can obviously enter the old antithesis in two ways: the

otherworldly, the absolute on the one hand and this-worldly on the other.

The individual spirit hovers in the midst between the two in search of delive-

rance. And besides, intermingling of both the types of views can be considered

as the third possibility. Either god is included as a new element with the old,

so that the individual spirit and the world are not the only ones opposed to

the Absolute, but now god, individual spirit and the world. Or the god pene-

trates a step deeper in the system. He slips into the dress of the Absolute,

assumes its attributes and functions and becomes himself Absolute. In the

first case the addition is to be recognised by the fact that the growth, so to

say, disturbs the natural curve of lines. And in the second case by the fact that

what should be one entity, oscillates between two different forms. The more

the definite language the text has, more acutely it is felt that the ideas are

stretched on a Procrustean bed. A nebula of general obscurity taking much of

the severity of the individual contradictions is spread over everything in the

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad which constantly alternates between the two concepts.

It is seen in many passages of the Upaniṣad that god, individual spirit and

the world stand next to one another and they are equally enveloped by the

absolute Brahman. It speaks of a triad: of both the unborn (simultaneously in

a pun: "of both the he-goats" comp. p. 139), the knower and the ignorant,

the ruler (īśa) and the non-ruler, then thirdly of the one unborn (in pun: "she-

goat"). "It is there to offer enjoyment to the enjoyer." Or also of the enjoyer,

the one to be enjoyed and the impeller. The Brahman is this triad or the triad

is in Brahman. Of the triad god and the individual spirit is the pair of the

knower and the ignorant, the ruler and the non-ruler and the impeller and

enjoyer. The third is the nature. She offers herself to the spirit for its enjoyment

depending upon its works, good or bad, while the god, impelling and guiding

the world-movement is withdrawn from taking part in that enjoyment. Thus

the individual spirit and the god stand next to each other. This is expressed by

one old, profound verse of the Rgveda and it is repeated here in the Upaniṣad:

"Two birds I know, friends and companions.

They nestle both on the same tree.

The one eats of the tree sweet berries.

The other looks on and looks on and does not eat."

God's relation to the spirit is that of the "other". The Upaniṣad also thinks

of it in its next verse:

"On the same tree sits the spirit,

Grieving, immersed, bewildered by its non-mistress,87

But when it sees the lord, the other, the chosen one,

In his greatness, its sorrow passes away."

But when the individual spirit and the "other" appear similar to each

other like "friends and companions" and both live like two birds on the same

tree, then how is it, upon what it is based that between the two there is abyssi-

mal depth separating the god from the suffering spirit? Or when the Brahman

rules over the world and the spirit in its eternal majesty, how come and why

is there god as the second highest beside this highest? The vague language of

this poetry makes us feel what an abnormal figure the thinking describes here

that can only be understood historically from the merging of the different

currents of thoughts. It emerges more clearly, unmitigated in the main text of

the classical Yoga where god is described as a "peculiar spirit" which—in

contrast to the rest—is untouched by worldly impurity, works and their fruits.

This god, this "peculiar spirit" is shrunken there to a wretched figure. And for

the doctrine seeing only suffering in all movement in the world, the peculiar

position of this cannot be easily understood—of this only being which is not

immediately taken away from the redeemed spirit of the world and is also not

immediately touched by the unredeemed of the world-suffering.

It is now true that more importance is given to the idea of god in our

Upaniṣad than in the classical text. We can certainly become aware of the

power here with which this idea has been able to penetrate successfully the

system of speculation. Soon the Upaniṣad speaks of it—is it not perhaps

aware of the inner discrepancy?—in the phraseology of the ancient Vedic

faith. God is called Rudra, mountain-dweller, archer. He is invoked in this

form with the words of the Rgveda that he should not harm the progeny of

the worshipper, neither his life, nor his cattle and horses. Soon new names

appear in place of the old names of gods. One speaks of Hara, Śiva, of the

one who is hidden in all beings. It is true that the poet leaves—perhaps not

accidently—the maze of concrete images associated with the wild name Śiva.

What applied to the Vedic Rudra, it might not have appeared to apply to him.

And finally, and above all, the god assumes features peculiar to the Brahman

or the Puruṣa of the old Sāṃkhya. And with that we now come to the second

of the both situations described above in which these ideas got connected with

one another. God does not take any more his place below the one of the

Absolute Being. This co-existence of the two peaks of existence, of the highest

and of the lowest, might appear to be meaningless. Thus the god pushes him-

self to the position of the absolute and merges with it. The Brahman is called

god; it is said of god what is said of the Brahman. The earlier demand of

recognising Brahman in oneself appears now in the form in which one is asked

to recognise god in oneself: the "other" as he was still called, has now put up

his house in the innermost part of one's ego. There is a constant oscillation

between the two ideas. God is classified under the absolute on the one hand,

and he is identified with it on the other. It is often impossible to decide from

one single reference whether it is based on this or that conception. In fact,

the same verse incorporates both. After the god is glorified as Rudra and it is

emphasised repeatedly that he "rules with his ruler's power" (Īśata īśanībhiḥ),

it is further said:

"Higher stands still the highest, the great Brahman,

Hidden in all beings, host for host.

Those who know this lord (īśa), this all-embracing one,

The One, they will be free from death"—

Thus the "lord" has identified himself with the Brahman standing on the

highest height over the lord Rudra.

This oscillation is diverse in individual cases. But on the whole, the signi-

ficance of the concept of god prevails over the one of absolute world-ground.

It is the majesty of god letting the Brahman-wheel of the universe turn. God

is meant when it is said that a magician (māyin) creates this All, in which the

"other", the soul is entrapped by magic (māyā):

"Magic game is the nature (prakṛti); the magician is the

highest god."88

Here appears first time the word Māyā. Indian thinkers have expressed it

later in a philosophical context. The idea that the world is only a deceptive

appearance is not yet obviously connected with it. What the magician creates

is for the moment really there. Yet, it is true that it does not have a complete,

deeply rooted right on life. Alien will rules over it playfully. But the great

volitient, whose gigantic toy the nature is, he is no one else but god. He guides

the tendencies of the Guṇas. He makes the germs sprout forth, causes transmigrations

of the souls and deliverance. The one longing for deliverance takes

refuge in him. He reveals himself to the yogin through the mystic word Om.

It happens, as if fire is produced by attribution of two fire-sticks:

"He sees, making the body lower piece of wood, and the Om

the upper one

The god like the hidden fire through twirling of meditation"

Thus to see and know the god: That is the goal at which the reward of salva-

tion nods.

"The eternal to the eternal, the spirit to the spirits,

The One, he gives joy to many.

The god, to whom Sāṃkhya and Yoga lead:

The one who knows him, the original cause, will be free

From bond."89

No other hope than this. An end of suffering without one knowing the god

can only then be there when the human beings wrap themselves in the ether-

space like in the skin.

The idea of god is so powerful in all that. So one can easily understand

that it has forefeited something of its warmth, the fullest personal life in its

178

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀMKHYA AND YOGA

179

merging with the abstractions of speculation. Let us hear what the final verse

of the Upaniṣad has to say:

"To one who has the highest devotion (bhakti) for god

and for his teacher,

Declared to him, a great soul, him will shine forth this doctrine."

We become conscious of the atmosphere of the Vedic school here; love of

god is a part of a teaching lesson that is practised under the guidance of a

teacher not loved less. But it is significant for us how we see here, Bhakti, like

Māyā earlier, appearing first time on the horizon. And again, this time even

by a single word, the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad proves itself to be the forerunner

of the Bhagvad Gītā glorifying Bhakti in such powerful tunes. "One who

loves me, will not lose", says the Krṣṇa, a god who has become a man.

It is already mentioned that particularly Yoga, the doctrine, which pur-

sued the least its own strict headwork, promoted the belief in a personal god

in the midst of the spheres of thoughts of the Indian speculation. Did this

belief in personal god belong to the Yoga from the beginning as an essential

element? Were Sāṃkhya and Yoga always so different in their nature as the

Epic differentiates them and as they are actually different in their classical

form: as an atheistic and a theistic system? One may doubt. The practice of

Yoga does not obviously postulate necessarily an idea of god according to its

inner logic. And it would be venturing too much to ascribe just this belief,

say, to the Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad, in which so much of the earliest Yoga appears,

in spite of isolated expressions tending towards theism. But an evident proof

that a system strongly enforcing the elements of Yoga could decisively reject

theism is given by a doctrine we must discuss at the end: the doctrine of

Buddha.

REFERENCES

1. See p. 110 above on such an individual poem appearing in the older group.

2. It is particularly valid basic constituent of the Upaniṣad considered as the first chapter

(Adhyāya), whereas the second is a supplement. I emphasise the ancient features of the

metre (see my article in ZDMG. XXXVII, 61) and also the two-syllabled vowels appearing

several times (only in the first Adhyāya), the nom. pl. jandṣaḥ (I, 19). Its chronological

relation to Kāṭhaka Up. in particular and also to the Upaniṣads in general is mentioned in

the Chapter on Buddhism (p. 189). Garbe, Sāṃkhya Philosophie has a different opinion

about the age of the Upaniṣads.

3. As a sacrificial reward for the priest.

4. Alms given to the priests active in sacrifice are cows. The "belief" is the assurance of

the sacred power of the priests and their offerings practised in generosity (Zeitschr. der dt.

Morg. Ges. 50, 448).

5. See the Section "A personal god. The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad", pp. 173ff.

6. I think the position of the old Sāṃkhya-doctrine with reference to the Veda can be

described in this way. It will be seen soon that we are dealing with it here. I don't think that

it is right to say that Sāṃkhya was basically "unbrahmanic" and was brahmanised later.

7. Derivation from sāṃkhya ("number"). It is clearly emphasised in the texts that the

name of this philosophy is based on the concept of number and counting. Comp. Dahl-

mann, Die Sāṃkhya-Phosphie als Naturlehre und Erlösungslehre 39 f. I doubt the original

ironical character of the name (Oltramare I, 223). It is wrong to explain Sāṃkhya as "reflec-

tion".

8. A verse of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (I, 4) illustrates an interest in such enumera-

tions. Here the phenomenal world is described as a wheel "with one felly with three tires,

sixteen ends, fifty spokes, twenty counter-spokes and six sets of eight; with one rope which

is manifold, having three different paths and whose illusion arises from two causes". Similar

enumerations are also done in the next verse.

9. Āsuri would make an exception. However, there can be an accidental similarity of

names between the knower of sacrifice by this name and a teacher of Sāṃkhya.

10. Śvetaś. Up. V, 2. I think it is quite unlikely that kapila is not here the name of the

teacher, but means "red" and the proper name is only later simulated on account of the

verse which was wrongly understood.

11. On the Brahmanic side, Asita Devala turns out to be a man from the ancient Vedic

period (see Macdonell-Keith, Vedic Index1, 48). His association with Sāṃkhya is chronolo-

gically unthinkable, and to say so is only a flight of imagination. On the Buddhistic side, he

is called an old man who visited a benedicted child in the oldest version of a legend. But

later only the name Asita is used. It appears, this was a real person, an uncle of a Buddhistic

monk. An Asita Devala, no doubt to be distinguished from this, but obviously identical with

the Vedic A.D., is a wise man from distant primordial period (Majjhima Nikāya 93; comp.

also Jataka 423, 522). It is obvious that the visitor of Buddha in his childhood had taken

up the name Devala along with the name Asita. Comp. also Jacobi, SBE, XLV, 269 note 1.

12. The Maitr. Up. is by far the most productive of the three Upaniṣads, but unfortu-

nately, it is the most recent.

13. Please refer to a sensitive essay by O. Strauß: Über den Stil der philosophischen

Partien des Mahābhārata (ZDMG. LXII, 661ff.).

14. It would be proper to mention here, above all, important research-works of J. Dhal-

mann (particularly "Nirvāṇa" 1896 and then "Die Sāṃkhya-Phosphie als Naturlehre und

Erlösungslehre 1902). They raise numerous, at times even, serious doubts—particularly

pertaining to over-estimation of the age of the Epic—but they have shown, on the whole,

the right way. Then we must mention Hopkins, The Great Epic of India (1902, p. 85 ff.);

Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 3, 8ff.)—Garbe (Die Sāṃkhya-Philosophie 1894, 394. comp.

also Beitr. zur ind. Kulturgesch., 1903, 76ff.) and Jacobi (Gött. Gel. Anz. 1897, 265f.) repre-

sent altogether a different view from mine on the significance of sources we are discussing

here, and generally on the history of origin of Sāṃkhya. According to Garbe it is seen that

the sources of the Epic "which precedes our systematic Sāṃkhya—writings in terms of time,

cannot claim the same class in terms of ideas" (S. Phil. 49), "The epical, monistical Sāṃkhya

is developed from a dualistic system, as it is offered by the classical Sāṃkhya. And that too

depending upon the Vedāntic concepts of the highest brahma (Jacobi, Ibid., 273). My opposi-

tion to these views of both the scholars are latently present in my whole arguments and can

be essentially justified from them. I ask here: Could intermingling of a classical system with

an alien doctrine have produced, as it has to be presumed, a deceptive appearance of a pre-

stage of a system, an appearance of a natural part between an old Upaniṣadic doctrine and

the classical Sāṃkhya? Would not the concurrent emergence of this peculiar appearance,

conspicuously remaining unchanged, doubly and even three times strange in the masses of

tradition, here of the Upaniṣads, and there of the epical sections and having partially broad

bases? More so, because the age of the texts in question lends strongest support to the

supposition that we have to deal here with a real part and not an apparent one? Can we

not see, for example, clearly the condition of a classical system in its evolution from the

original in the material of the older sources (p. 145) referring to the connection between

mahān and buddhi? It is in complete agreement with the views that one comes across also the

classical Sāṃkhya in isolated—passages in the welter of the Epic chrono-

logically mixed up and partially reaching down to the much later period. In fact, it would

180

have been strange, if we were not to find this. But I don’t find any reason to place Sāṃkhya

in a distant past for that sake, as G. and J. would like it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my disagreement with the view of

Garbe (ibid., 21). He speaks of “the influence of Sāṃkhya on Brahminism” coming in the

period between the older and the later groups of Upaniṣads. I don’t think that Brahminism

and Sāṃkhya are different, but S. is the most important product of Brahminism developed

as its direct consequence. Garbe’s sentence above has, therefore, to be rewritten as under:

that the decisive steps to develop that product were taken in the relevant intervening period

within Brahminism.

15. While the pun mentioned on p. 139 calling Prakṛti “she-goat” (at the same time

“unborn”) leads into opposite direction.

16. The basic meaning of Guṇa is either “thread” (particularly the thread forming a rope

with other threads?) or: a component of a combined whole similar more or less to other

parts, forms, so to say, a position in other positions. That is why dviguṇa, triguna “double”,

“triple”. I don’t think that guṇa can be isolated later from such combinations (Oltramare I,

239 note 2). Also that guṇa is derived from gunayati “he multiplies” (Deussen, Allg. Gesch.

der Phil. I, 3, 47f.). It will be no more different from one wanting to derive “mehr” (more)

from “vermehren” (multiply, increase). I think that there are serious doubts about Dahl-

mann’s rendering (Sāṃkhya-Philosophie 50) of G. as “defining, forming quality”.

17. Its nine doors are two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, mouth, urethra and anus.

18. Oltramare has rightly noted this. But I think it is not convincing when he says (I, 240)

that antecedents of Guṇa-doctrine are to be ascribed to Śat. Br. II, 4, 2, 1ff. and Atharvaveda

VIII, 2.

19. The three Guṇas are made parallel with the “three castes” in the Epic. Besides, the

first two guṇas correspond to the first two castes and the third to the Śūdras. Vaiśyas are

inevitably omitted.

20. Maitr. Up. III, 5.

21. Comp. p. 13 above; also remarks of Jacobi, SBE. XLV, p. XXXIII f.

22. The classical Sāṃkhya lets this impetus come from the Puruṣas (here introduced as

plural). Garbe, S. Phil. 222 f.; Oltramare I, 263ff. Is a prelude of this doctrine to be found

in Maitr. Up. V, 2?

23. Oltramare I, 244.

24. Or is there a trace of Guṇa-doctrine that the expression sattva is used for “intellect”

(buddhi) in 6, 7 (in a portion added later to the Upaniṣad)? When it is said in the last verse

of the Upaniṣad that Naciketas has become “free from Rajas”, I would not like to consider

it as such a trace; comp. Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 4, 23. Besides “free from old age” (vijarah) may

have rather to be accepted instead of “free from Rajas” (virājad) (M. Müller also thinks of

it), as it is made possible on account of “free from death” (vimṛtyuh) which is next to it. I

doubt—but I cannot go here into details—that on the other hand there is a trace of the old

form of Sāṃkhya-doctrine without the Guṇas in the well-known poetic narration of

Aśvaghoṣa of the doctrine of Buddha’s teaching Arāḍa Kālāma.

25. Maitr. Up. VI, 10.

26. I think what is said here confirms that Puruṣa who is, as such, away from the activity

in the world is called “the great Ātman” where he emerges as an animator of an individual in

the technical language of the old Sāṃkhya. More on it p. 145ff.

27. Mahābhārata XIII, 910 ed. Calc.

¶28. Let us not see in the translations “intellect” and “mind” an expression of the need to

render the Indian catchwords by German catchwords. I think, Ahaṃkāra is not “the ego-

maker”, but “ego-making”, i.e. saying “I” and activising egoism. It is similar to one saying

svāhākāra in the sacrifice, the sacrificial word svāhā, i.e. “Svāhā-making” or in grammar

akāra, the sound à, i.e. “a-making”. Similarly Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 3, 56.

29. Here the epical scheme deviates from the classical. It gives precedence to the group

of ether etc. among the five entities mentioned twice. Then follows the other group of five

in the form of five objects of senses: sound etc. Comp. particularly O. Strauß, zur Geschichte

des Sāṃkhya, Wiener Zeitschr.f.d. Kunde des Morg. XXVII, 257ff.—Can Kāṭh. Up. 3, 10 be

THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE BEGINNINGS OF SĀṂKHYA-KĀRIKĀ

181

utilised as an evidence of an old form of the series, although it would be strange, where

objects of senses stood between mind (manas) and senses?

30. Mahābhārata XII, 315, 15f.; then XIV, 36, 4f. For which Deussen aptly compares

Sāṃkhya-Kārikā 12.

31. Kāṭh. Up. III, 12. In v. 13 different entities appear and they are all called Ātman. This

would have decreased the strength of the conclusion just drawn, if other coroborations

had not been there.

32. I am not able to understand this difficult passage in Maitr. Up. III, 1, 2 in any other

sense than this. I think (so also Deussen, Sechzig Up. 322) what is said there is that the

Bhūtātman is Ātman (i.e., Puruṣa), in so far as “he is overpowered by the Guṇas of Prakṛti”

by abiding in the body. It may not then be confusing that this Bhūtātman—it is, of course,

rather surprising—is distinguished from antaḥpuruṣa in §3. Please see further how the

unification of the Bhūtātman with the (universal) Ātman is treated in IV, 1; one could not

speak of the creation of Prakṛti in this way. Then what is said in III, 2 of being carried away

of Bh. by the waves of the qualities and it binding its self is word by word repeated in VI, 30,

but now referring to Puruṣa. If now, on the other hand, Pradhāna is explicitly indicated as

the creator of Bh., then that conforms to the shifting referring to the great Ātman in the same

chapter. See particularly Deussen, Allg. Gesch. I, 3, 63f.; Hopkins Great Epic. 39ff. on

Bhūtātman in the Epic.

33. I emphasise XII, 210, 37; 304, 42; 308, 36. Comp. also Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil.

I, 3, 55.

34. Thus already Maitr. Up. VI, 10.

35. Only approximate translation can be attempted here (comp. ref. 28 above); I refrain

from detailed discussion of the relevant ideas.

36. The Tannātras appear to be given a precedence over Mahābhūta in agreement with

the classical system. This is different from what it is in the Epic (comp. reference 29 above).

I guess it from Maitr. Up. III, 2; VI, 10. As for the last passage, one cannot agree with Deus-

sen (Sechzig Up. 337 note 2). The importance of the term viśeṣa has changed between the

older and the later period (see Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 3, 65; StrauB WZKM.

XXVII, 265).

37. I think Deussen (Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2, 219) has mistaken this feature and pre-

sumed too much of the orderliness of today when he means to reproduce the original inten-

tion of the system with the words: “The entry of Ahaṃkāra or the ego-maker in the series

of development points out to it, and it can be understood only then, when there is a transi-

tion in it from the general-cosmic evolution to the psychic.”

38. An example of such a cosmogony has erred into this surrounding (Maitr. Up. V, 2).

It is in stark contrast with it.

39. It is supposed that the real motive for the establishment of phases of evolution lay in

the concepts of involution in which the creatures enter Brahman in dying, deep sleep and

Yoga. It is possible although explanations given by Deussen (Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 2,

224f; comp. also Oltramare I, 238) on this do not prove much. Doubts are raised in my

mind, for the most significant, uppermost evolutions of Sāṃkhya are not repeated in Yoga.

Is not a fuller agreement of the Sāṃkhya with the doctrine which is of all the seat of the

doctrine of involutions to be expected in the opinion just mentioned? I refer to the discussion

on the relationship between Sāṃkhya and Yoga in the section on Yoga.

40. Maitr. Up. II, 4.

41. Or the figure allowed itself to be portrayed thus as it happens in a passage in the Epic

(XII, 217, 6): “both the Undeveloped and Puruṣa, and what is different from and greater

than the Undeveloped and Puruṣa”. Yet this Absolute founded upon both the absolutes,

which so to say, comprises them, is obviously a later embellishment without any consequence

for the total movement of thinking.

42. Maitr. Up. II, 6; then Kāṭh. Up. V, 9 ff.

43. Kāṭh. Up. V, 3. In the following: ibid., II, 22; Maitr. Up. II, 6; Kāṭh. Up. VI, 3.

44. Maitr. Up. II, 7. In the following: ibid., II, 6; VI, 10.

45. What is meant is : while he pulled the objects to himself with reins.

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183

46. Comp. p. 147 above. The elemental Ātman (bhūtātman) is here no more the Puruṣa in his individualisation, what is, according to me, originally so, but his image on the material side.

47. Comp. ref. 32 above.

48. Maitr. Up. II, 5. "The one who is in every men": pratipuruṣaḥ (as also V, 2). One has to take Puruṣa here in an unphilosophical sense and yet feel that a starting point is given here for a metamorphosis of a universal Puruṣa into a plurality of an individual Puruṣa (p. 160f.). The "domain" is the body; emanation of Puruṣa animating it is the "knower of the domain". Then follows: ibid., VI, 10 (I see the oldest trace of the idea of Liṅga in Brh. Ār. Up. IV, 4, 6); II, 7; Mahābhārata XII, 217, 12; Maitr. Up. VI, 30; III, 2.3.

49. A passage with the same wording precedes this. "By the streams of Guṇas. . . with a net."—Here referring to the elemental Ātman. This is older of the two, partially identical passages.

50. Like good and bad, downwards and upwards. Such opposites are preferably used for the concept directed towards the movement of becoming and perishing swaying between here and there.

51. Maitr. Up. IV, 2. Then I, 3.4.; Mahābhārata XII, 309.

52. Comp. p. 71 above with reference 105 (in Ch. 1), 20. See also passages in the Epic mentioned by Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil. I, 3, 20.

53. Maitr. Up. IV, 4 (there is obviously a connection with Yoga in suyuktaḥ ("well-yoked"). Then Kāṭh. Up. II, 23; Maitr. Up. VI, 30.

54. I think, the next verse (Kāṭh. Up. 2, 4) also points in the direction of the Yoga and thus, it confirms what is said here.

55. I would not like to look at it as conclusive designation of these catchwords when, e.g., Kāṭh. Up. 4, 2 speaks of a futile search "of the stable among the unstable". The expression is too vague.

56. Maitr. Up. VI, 10.

57. Why does only this onlooker look on it? Is he interested in it? Afterall, he has no power to let an effective influence be emanated from his surveillance.

58. VI, 30. Then Mahābhārata XII, 307, 28. I don't think it is necessary to mention Kārikā-quotations.

59. Please remember that "determination" is a characteristic function of "intellect", the highest component of the material counterpart of the spirit. Comp. p. 147 above.

60. The material counterpart of Puruṣa; comp. p. 152.

61. So also the famous simile (above p. 158) of the lame (Puruṣa) and the blind (Prakṛti) who go together on their path. The blind can get directions from the one who can see, but how can Prakṛti do it? The lame can show directions, but how can Puruṣa do it?

62. XII, 352.

63. Oltramare I, 251 emphasises this theme.

64. Yogavāsiṣṭha, cited from Vijñānabhikshu on Sāṃkhyasūtra II, 34.

65. Comp. ref. 141, Chap. I above and p. 83f.

66. See my notes on Ṛgveda X, 72, 3.

67. Śvetāśvatara Up. VI, 13.

68. ibid., II.

69. Maitr. Up. VI, 25.

70. I refer to the excellent commentary by Oltramare I, 322ff.

71. II, 10. In the following: Maitr. Up. VI, 20. 21; Bhag. Gītā VI, 13; Kāṭh Up. IV, 1; Maitr. Up. VI 10; Kāṭh. Up. II, 15. 17; Maitr. Up. VI, 22.

72. To keep away bad smells, moscitos, etc.?

73. Kāṭh. Up. III, 13. I doubt that the "Tranquil-Self" is to be attributed to the material principle (Avyaktaṃ Prakṛti). How would it come to this name? This interpretation would certainly correspond to the later Sāṃkhya-philosophy; the uppermost product of Prakṛti is absorbed in this. But the "Great Self" has to be still understood as an emanation of Puruṣa (p. 147) in the old passage being discussed here. And just this is meant by "Tranquil Self". Maitr. Up. V, 1 appears to be confirming this.

74. Śvet. Up. II, 11. In the following: Kāṭh. Up. II, 12; Maitr. Up. VI, 34; Śvet. Up. II. 13.

75. The belief of the old science of magic that the knowledge of an object lends one power over this object (p. 4 above) is very much alive here. The yogin directing the commanding power of his meditation, e.g., upon the form of his body, acquires through it a capacity of making himself invisible. If he directs it towards the essence of five elements, he obtains command over them, etc. Yogaśutra III, 21. 44.

76. Mahābhārata XIII, 40.41. ed. Calc.; comp. also Hopkins JAOS XXII, 359.

77. Referring to the fact that the yogin by virtue of his Yogic power is in direct "contact with the material basic principle, and therefore, with all space and time, etc., (Aniruddha on Sāṃkhya S. I, 91) does not, I think, dispel the doubt.

78. Should that not have been quietly presumed what would have been presumed later? that such a success was possible only on account of enormous merits of earlier existences?

79. Maitr. Up. VI, 34. Then Kāṭh. Up. VI, 17; Maitr. Up. VI, 20.21. 22.

80. Edv. Lehmann, der Buddhismus als indische Sekte, als Welt-religion 46f. Obviously under the influence of Jacobi's essay "der Ursprung des Buddhismus aus Sāṃkhya-Yoga". See Tuxen, Yoga 94f. on Theory of Causality in the classical Yoga.

81. As it is well-known, the naming of the organ of thinking called citta in Y. is a major deviation from Sāṃkhya in the terminology of the classical Yoga (comp. evidences in Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 3, p. 552f.). We have here, it appears, a simple and more original view in comparison with the complicated analysis of the Sāṃkhya. Would it have been accepted in Yoga, if this system had accepted the Sāṃkhya point of view from the beginning? It may be said that the difference appears just here, because the Yoga must have possesed from olden times, at this point, its own well-defined manner of expression. Terms it missed or those not well-defined, could easily have been borrowed earlier or later from the Sāṃkhya on account of the scientific prestige it got.

82. More information on this in the Chapter on Buddhism.

83. I think, Senart (Album Kern 104) has aptly noted it even before. But I become sceptical when the scholar lets that expression reach Buddhism from "Vaisṇavite Yoga" (see what I have said further in the text). I have already mentioned this point in Arch für Rel. wiss. XIII 579f. and I do not want to come back to it here again. The popularity of the word among the heterodoxic sects may have acted against the use of the expression Nirvāṇa in classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga besides the factor that the concept of "extinction" could hardly have been sympathetic to these systems.

84. Thus the Jainas speak of the founder of their community as the highest among those who taught Nirvāṇa (Sacred Books of the East XLV, 290). Thus it appeared quite obvious and natural in the character of such master to be the teacher of Nirvāṇa.

85. It may be emphasised here that J. Dahlmann (see ref. 14 above) has given a lead in the treatment of this question.

86. Comp. particularly F. Otto Schrader, Über den Stand der indischen Philosophie zur Zeit Mahāvīras and Buddhas for the literature on Jainas. And for the Epic, Deussen, Allg. Gesch. der Phil. I, 3, p. 34ff., 74ff.; O. StrauB, Ethische Probleme aus dem Mahābhārata, Giorn. della Soc. Asiatica Ital. XXIV, particularly p. 226ff.

87. The tree inhabited by all and the nature is a non-mistress.

88. The trend of thought discussed in this verse-line does not go to the extent of saying that nature is to be represented as magic and god as magician. But it is the other way round. Earlier there was a mention of magic and magician, and now it is explained: by former we understand nature and by latter, however, god.—I thank Dr. Johnson, Benares for drawing my attention to this reference.

89. Both the first two lines are borrowed from Kāṭh. Up. They are used there for Ātman.

CHAPTER III

THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHISM

Brahminism and Buddhism

We have traced so far the development of the Sāmkhya-doctrine in its outlines ftom its ancient beginnings, its rise from the Vedic Brahman-specula-tion to its perfect classical maturity of form and style. We have further got acquainted with the parallel evolution of the mystic-ascetic practices in the Yoga.

Now it must be asked whether, how and where the trends of thoughts of Buddhism branch off from these lines.

The same question could be asked about the faith of the Jainas, the second community of ascetics, so closely related to the Buddhistic in many respects. It has continued to live from approximately the same age to the present day. But it is felt that the literature of the Jainas has not yet been sufficiently studied and complicated accumulation of older and later layers not fully analysed to enable us to venture to approach this problem at present.1 Let us, therefore, restrict ourselves to Buddhism for the time being.

A continuity between the multitudes of traditions we worked with so far and the Buddhistic is broken in so many respects that we are faced with considerable disadvantages in our research. The old Buddhistic literature, closely related and adjacent to the old Jaina literature, moves in the opposite direction of the Brahmanic—and must at least appear so in the beginning—and essentially on a separate ground.

The language itself characterises the contrast. On the Brahmanic side, the Vedic language becomes modern in the course of time and finally passes over smoothly to a type of literary classical Sanskrit. We have a popular dialect on the Buddhistic side as also on the side of the Jainas. The sacred texts of Buddhism were originally composed in the dialect of the Magadha-kingdom (of southern Bihar). Its oldest form has been preserved for the posterity in the Pali-dialect (primary stage of Marathi?). "I direct", the Master is supposed to have said, "that each individual learn the words of Buddha in his own tongue." Thus it is a sign of rejecting the exclusiveness and archaism, a trend pointing towards the present.

Geographical Relation of Buddhism to the Upaniṣads

Also the geographical ambiences in which the Buddhistic literature was developed appear to be separating it from the main bulk of the Upaniṣads and the philosophical evidences of the Epic. The old homelands of the

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THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHISM

Brahmanic thinkers were situated to the west, to be more exact, to the north-west, of the confluence of both the mighty rivers the Gaṅgā and the Yamunā. A Brāhmaṇa-text has recorded in ancient times that the Brahmanas did not use to go far beyond this point into the eastern lands. On the other hand, the Buddhistic literature makes it very clear in the descriptions of the wanderings of Buddha and his disciples that the west remained on the whole an alien land at that time for the Buddhistic ascetics accustomed to moving continuously up and down through wide distances in the east. Of course, influences of Brahma-nic speculation touched naturally the east also quite early, at least in ramifications: this is shown by the Upaniṣadic report on Yājñavalkya and Janaka, the king of Videha (somewhere in Tirhut). As a matter of fact, the eastern lands appear in the entire Buddhistic literature to be full of Brahmanas, who crossed all the time Buddha's path in a friendly or an inimical manner. Obviously, many of these Brahmanas must have prepared a ground also for the speculations of the Upaniṣads besides claiming places of abode for their castes, Vedas and sacrifices.

their conception of the world and the life, particularly of the spiritual life appearing in it.

Of course, we can emphasise here only a few characteristic features.

The life of old thinkers, as described in the Upaniṣads, was spent only in villages. We hear of herds-rearing Brahmanas and their pupils driving the cows of the teacher to the grazing ground and back home. There was hardly anything, except may be, just a beginning of an urban development. In the age of old Buddhism, a number of significant cities form the focus of public and spiritual life and of cultural progress. There is often a mention of big traders and highly-developed trade, of the crowds of people, of elegant and famous courtesans in many complicated stories we read. We read of the train of elephants moving out of the city-gates and the king and his retinue riding on them to the pleasure gardens.

Spiritual movements find a different echo in this urban life than before. Now many claim to participate in what was earlier a secret learning and a strictly protected heritage of the few, and the knowers acknowledged this desire, in fact, they themselves awakened it and promoted it with warmhearted kindness. Only frugal description, not showing any definite contours, appears in the old Upaniṣads of the first men renouncing mundane possessions for the sake of the otherworld and "marching out" (p. 82f.). The old Buddhistic texts know of multitudes and multitudes of such renouncers. They form a society of an order of a distinctive sort; they have created their own laws in which affairs of community life and community discipline are thoroughly settled. The Buddhism has laid down a definite ritual for this "marching out". It is much elaborate for a second spiritual act. This makes the ascetic who is leaving home a fully entitled member of the monks' community.

A progress in shaping the religious world of ideas corresponds to such progress of spiritual institutions.

Two main trends of this progress emerge.

On the one hand, an unfinished, indefinite, flexible thinking and imagination is grasped in clear contours, consequently developed and systematised and the established lines are further enlarged. Thus for example, the idea of Brahman got just only a prominent position in the old Upaniṣads; it had still not reached a stable form. It has since been hypothetised further to god Brahman in Buddhism, and the figure of this god has already run through a bit of history. The foundations of the belief in metempsychosis are applied to the Karman-doctrine in the Upaniṣads. For Buddhism, it is all a permanent heritage for long, worked through from all sides, extended by imagination to infinity, loaded and overloaded by the embellishment of numerous stories. There appears in the Upaniṣads a simple and an unpretentious thought that the knowledge, awakening (budh—) releases one from the world-suffering. The Buddhism possesses the dogma of a one "who is awakened" (buddha). Of his regular return in immeasurable series at specific places of aeons. Of the heavy battle preceding their victory and of the merits they have to collect in

Chronological Relation to the Older Upaniṣads; Historical Advances

After considering the geographical connections, let us look into the chronological aspects of both these literatures, and in their context, into the sweeping changes in general conditions of the culture, and particularly into the style of religious and philosophical thinking.

Compared with the older layers of the Upaniṣads, it is absolutely sure that even the first beginnings of the Buddhistic literature are of later origin, in fact, of much later origin.

This is seen in language and metre, in greatly advanced gift of the Buddhists to evolve didactically greater masses of thoughts in their treatment of dialogues.

It is, above all, seen in the whole contents of these literatures, in

unforseeable distances of transmigration of souls. Of the different ranks

of beings advancing further or less further on their way to knowledge and

sinlessness.

Then comes, on the other hand, besides this tendency of elaborating,

another, equally pronounced tendency, but in many respects in certain, but

understandable contradiction to it. It is the tendency of criticism against the

phenomenon, of doing-away with the well-established prejudices and gratui-

tousness, of observation of things, not misled by the factors of alien phantoms.

The Vedas lost their authority among many religious aspirants—even among

the Buddhists themselves. Those elders delivering the Vedic wisdom are like

a chain of blind men; “He who is in front sees nothing; he who is in the middle

sees nothing; he who is behind sees nothing”.4 Brahmanas meaning to

wash away sins by water are derided. If the water were to be of help,

“then all frogs and tortoises must come into heaven, the water serpents and crocodiles,

and all those who live in water”. And what about the Brahmanas? On what

basis do they claim to be something special? On their birth? But then they

have the same body like others from the birth. Only the deeds one does grant

the man his position, and not his birth. We shall soon come across discussions

with which Buddha’s ambiences echoed, about the reality or unreality of the

otherworldly reward, otherworldly punishment of the deeds, about the exis-

tence of the moral world-order: there developed scepticism, albeit fought by

Buddhism. It went further than the manifestations cited just above, but it was

related to them in acknowledging only what was palpable or rationally con-

ceivable in rejecting the mystery hidden behind the things. As a prominent

feature of the Buddhistic philosophy itself, it reveals the same trend, but it

firmly emphasises that it is the causal connection which controls all happe-

ning. It is true, concepts of other types have certainly not disappeared from

the horizon of the old Buddhists for that sake: belief in all sorts of miracles,

in evil and naughty hobgoblins, in serpents in human form or in many other

creatures and happenings of a similar sort. They talk about them in all earnest-

ness—to think of humour is altogether out of place. But a fresh breath of air

in thinking, a clear-headed investigation of reality penetrates these nebulas

sometimes here, or sometimes there. We may compare the language spoken

by the old Upaniṣads and the addresses of Buddha on the nature and function

of human sense-organs.5 “Eye is the main part of a sacrificial song.” “What

this eye is, that is the sun; that is the Adhvaryu-priest.” “The directions of

the sky are the ear.” So the Upaniṣads. The Buddhistic thinker, on the other

hand, concerned with the eye and its activity, leaves aside the sun and the

priest. He speaks only of the eye and the visible objects, the feeling resulting

out of this contact, it may be then, it is joy, it is sorrow, neither sorrow, nor

joy—of a feeling developing out of contact “just like the heat is caused by

rubbing and bringing together two pieces of wood, and the fire is produced…”

There cannot be any doubt about the chronological result of all this.

Compared with the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka or Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Buddhistic

literature is obviously the later. And besides, it is unthinkable that it comes

immediately after those predecessors. There has to be a development some-

where in the middle, and it is impossible to consider it to be negligible. It

requires centuries.6

Chronological Relation to the Later Upaniṣads

But unfortunately, we get onto a slippery ground, if we want to assess

the chronological relation of the later Upaniṣads containing the Sāṁkhya-

doctrine to the Buddhistic literature. Better than what we have discussed so

far, we can judge with other reliable sources, the strong age-differences than

the negligible ones. I can, of course, say without any doubt that the Kāṭhaka

Upaniṣad—at least its first half—belongs to the pre-Buddhistic period. I refer

to what I have said about this Upaniṣad above (p. 131f.). It tallies with it—even

if it is not evident on its own—that the figure of Māra, the tempter of worldly

pleasures, who is ultimately identified with the god of death, a figure fantasti-

cally developed and firmly rooted in the spheres of Buddhistic concepts, is

unmistakably seen in Mṛtyu (“Death”) in this Upaniṣad. The chronological

relation of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad to Buddhism can be questioned. I

would be more inclined to ascribe it to a later period than the old Buddhistic

literature. I can judge the Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣad (comp. p. 133) considerably

more conclusively. And there is no doubt that the epical evidences on Sām-

khya—thanks to their composition—even it is not with reference to their

contents—are post-Buddhistic.

What the researcher of these developments of thoughts sincerely misses is

the description of the heritages of a tradition as a grouping together of the

Brahmanic and the Buddhistic traditions—at the same time of the Buddhistic

and the Jaina traditions—in a common setting, as an existence of conti-

nuously dated connecting links firmly fixed in relationship to one another.

Such links are sufficiently offered to the researcher, say, where it is the ques-

tion of emergence of Christianity from Judaism and Greek influences upon

it. They lend to the research a confidence that has been hopelessly denied to

us here. Where Buddhism appears, there a curtain suddenly lifts at a place

which was earlier outside the mental horizon. Of course, the disintegration of

multitudes of tradition is directly connected with the absence of the use of

script. If a school, a community of India of that time perishes, the literature

also perishes. Particularly when the indispensable living upholders (of the

tradition) are also not there to care for its existence. All subordinate, occa-

sional literary production and with that the preservation of connecting links

between the tradition of this school or that school is ruled out right from the

beginning. We need only to look to the agreement of many dogmatically

important expressions in Brahminism and Buddhism (comp. Ref. 120 in

Chap. 1) or the identity of the whole verses in both the literatures, to recog-

nise at the first glance that there must actually have been strongly binding

threads. But no tradition really speaks of the more exact form of the figure in

which the link of Buddhism with the Brahmanic doctrines could have repres-

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THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHISM

191

ented, and where exactly both the lines of development are separated from

one another. The research can ascertain that—but one must be afraid, grop-

ing in the dark and vaguely—only from its inner instincts.

Buddha’s Environment. Sophism, Pyrrhonism

Environments in the midst of which Buddha lived and identified the

outlines of his philosophy were filled by an activity of the most different

philosophical and pseudophilosophical trends, of serious work of thought

as also of noise of empty and emptiest of all dissimulations addicted by fame

and profit. The Buddhistic and Jaina-texts yield an excessively lively image.

It was a condition that must have been inevitably brought about by quickly

working dexterity of the Indian spirit. Self-powered, self-conscious thinking

had fought for its first successes: with those, the paths were opened on which

the thought could easily romp about criss-cross in all freedom with delight.

The group of dialecticians could roam about from system to system. This

is ridiculed in an old Buddhistic verse:

"Now holding here, now grasping there,

Like an ape, hopping from branch to branch."

This Indian sophism, as it can be named, has been described more than once

recently. There emerged other problems beside the important problem of

salvation. They depended less upon the care of the highest happiness than upon

the natural thirst for knowledge finding no peace till it has forced its way with

full confidence on its own ability to the last limits or limitlessness of the

conception of the world. They philosophised on eternity or transitoriness of

the world and the ego, on finiteness and infiniteness of the world. The old

question of existence or non-existence of the soul, of its continuance or its

annihilation on the other side of death was disputed again and again. They

One did not allow oneself to be concerned by doubt in existence on the

other side of death, in law and force of basic orders of moral life. Here the

rationalisation of the conception of the world we discussed made a halt for

the Buddhistic consciousness. In disputation with the Pyrrhonians and the

materialists infringing upon these foundations, one was satisfied in destroying

their arguments dialectically. For the rest, they appealed to the institutions

assigned to the care of the holy ascetics. They were looking after the problems

of the otherworld; an opponent was described as a person born blind not

wanting to believe in existence of forms and colours, neither in the stars, nor

in the moon and the sun.7 The point here can be recognised at which the

minds parted company. One turned away in anger and despise from the one

who questioned the moral value of action. "Like of woven clothes there are,

a hairy cloth is called the worst—it is cold in winter, hot in summer, of dirty

colour, badly smelling, coarse for feel—so the teaching of Makkhali is the

worst among all teachings of other ascetics and Brahmanas. Makkhali the

fool teaches thus, opines thus: there is no action, there is no deed, there is

no power."—Thus he contradicts the Buddhas of the past and of the future,

he contradicts even the Buddha of the present day. They all proclaim with

one voice the doctrine of efficiency and freedom of action.

Buddha Rejects Purely Theoretical Knowledge

But hardly less decisive was the aversion of the old Buddhism to all

philosophical theorising just for the sake of mere theory than the rejection of

such opinions attacking the moral foundations. Buddha, in bitter distress of

mind, had fought a long and a hard battle for an escape from the sufferings of

the world torn by death. Could he have accepted the fact that longing for the

One, that is necessary, be burdened with a useless ballast? He could impos-

sibly have shut his eyes to the profound impression in which the man has

ensnared himself in his dissatisfaction with the world within and without "in

the thicket of opinions, in the stage-play of opinions and in the convulsion of

opinions". It was unthinkable that in the face of the activity of his contem-

porary dialecticians, he could have allowed an opinion to rule within himself,

similar to the cheerful tolerance of Mephistopheles against the "stum that

behaved quite absurdly". Even where the worst protuberances of that sophism

were avoided, the urge for the desire of understanding for his own sake had

again and again to appear to him as an impediment. The ascetics and the

Brahmanas ensnared in it "were not released from the power of Māra". The

right disciple "does not also cling to knowledge".

It appears that Jainism, the twin-sect of Buddhism, had not also been

unfamiliar with related feelings.8 But this reaction against the trends of the

dialectics surrounding them from all sides emerges with a special force in the

statements of the Buddhists. On the one hand, Buddha saw the highest esteem

for knowledge, the all-powerful, world-ruling knowledge, before his eyes,

and felt doubtlessly within himself a strong urge in that direction. This esteem

was firmly established in the ancient period among the Brahmanas, the born

knowers. This esteem was also a legacy of their descendants. Of course, it had

come down to them in a more refined form, yet nonetheless strongly. On

the other hand, he got acquainted with the lighthearted play with knowledge,

the contemptuous flippancy of faith in the feasibility of knowledge in sophism

and Pyrrhonism. Not as a theoretical thinker, but as a great educator of

humanity, he went his own way between knowing and not knowing and not

having a desire of knowing, looking forward alone to the only highest goal of

deliverance with an unwavering faith in attainment of knowledge which

would lead to this goal. At the same time, he appeared like those Pyrrhonians,

and yet in reality he was different. He made his mind light by throwing the

dead weight. He rejected all knowledge which "brings no profit, does not

promote a transformation into holiness, does not lead to aversion from the

mundane, to extinction of all pleasures, to cessation of the perishable, to

peace, perception, to enlightenment and to Nirvāṇa".9 The one who strives

for empty knowledge is compared with a mad wounded fellow: he will not

allow himself to be treated by a physician, till he knows the name of the man

who has wounded him, and how the weapon looked like with which he was

wounded–this fool will die of his wounds. "Therefore", Buddha says to a

monk who crosses his limit in asking questions, "what is not revealed by me,

let that remain unrevealed, and what is revealed, let it be revealed." At other

time he shows the questioner his place: "With your thoughts under the

control of desire, do you think, you could surpass your master's doctrine?"

Influence of Sāṃkhya? Buddhistic Evidences on It

While examining historical relationship between Buddhism and Sāṃkhya

we must always take into account this self-imposed restriction of Buddhistic

thinking in contrast to that system for which there are no unsolved questions.

Direct agreements can be found from the beginning only in one portion of

the path described by the Sāṃkhya-speculation. In problems rejected by

Buddhism, at the most the point at which they were rejected or perhaps failure

of perfect rejection, can point out to the Sāṃkhya.

But first so much appears now to be clear that Sāṃkhya's influence on

Buddhism, if at all it has been there, can hardly be considered as a direct

influence.

Among the utterances of the Buddhists on contemporary philosophemes

there are also those which appear to be referring to the Sāṃkhya-doctrines.10

Thus there is a mention of philosophers who arrived at an opinion only by

meditation and inference: "Imperishable is the Self (attā=sk. ātman)11

the world, not creating anything new, standing on the peak of a mountain,11

standing firm like pillars. The living beings, it is true, race through their

transmigrations; they die and are born again. Yet the existence is eternal and

imperishable." And a little later in the same text: "What is named eye, ear,

nose, tongue and body: this Self is fickle, perishable, not eternal, subject

to change. But what is called soul, mind and understanding: this Self is

imperishable." The Sāṃkhya dualism of the imperishable spirit and the

imperishable nature appears to be unmistakable in the first of the two

passages. The imagery of "standing on the peak of a mountain" is popular

both in the Epic and the classical Sāṃkhya. Of course it is not employed

there for the two entities, but only for Puruṣa to contrast his unmoved per-

sistence with the world-movement: thus there appears a discrepancy on the

Buddhistic side as it is so common in its relationship to the doctrines and other

conditions of alien faith. The second passage was then concerned with the

distinction taught by Sāṃkhya between the spirit and the substances which

are in reality material, but having a deceptive appearance of spirituality

(p. 159). The account here is also not correct. For not only the five senses, but

also the group to which the mind belongs, are for the Sāṃkhya on the side of

the material nature.

Are There Inner Correlations?

When now these passages really make it plausible that also the formulas

of Sāṃkhya have somehow or other penetrated into the utterances of the

Buddhistic authors, then obviously the Sāṃkhya—I mean Sāṃkhya itself

and not influences indirectly coming from it—has not played any consider-

able role in the whole philosophical activity surrounding the emerging

Buddhism.12 The name Sāṃkhya does not appear in the old Buddhistic texts.

Also the terminology of the Buddhistic dogmatics is far removed from the

special language of Sāṃkhya—different from Yoga—in most of the points to

such an extent, as it is generally possible when problems are similarly treated

and when we consider that Indian thinkers who are neighbours in time speak

on both sides. An attempt made to rediscover13 the fundamental series of

categories of the Sāṃkhya identically into the last detail in Buddhism could

not also succeed. It is based on wrong assessment, I may say of aerial view,

in which the distance between both the doctrines manifests itself.

Of course, this absence or decline of direct contacts does not preclude the

possibility that even from distance, through unknown intermediate stages,

the leading ideas of the Sāṃkhya must have exerted an influence on Buddhistic

thinking.

Observations to be made here point out to the actual existence of such

influence in a profound manner.14 The threads from the Sāṃkhya to

Buddhism stretch over wide intervals. But they are strong.

The Buddhistic Dualism between "What is Conformed" and

"What is not Conformed"

Of all the mundane and super-mundane apprehended by thinking or

somehow or other taken into consideration, the Buddhism demands an

evidence of its affiliation to one of the two realms: the perishable "conformed"

(saṃkhārā) or the immortal "unconformed".15 "Origin is seen; dying is seen;

existence subject to change is seen. These are the three conformative characte-

ristics of what is conformed. No origin is seen; no dying is seen; existence

subject to no change. These are the three non-conformative characteristics of

what is not conformed." "There is, O disciples, something that is unborn,

ungrown, unmade, unconformed. If this unborn, ungrown, unmade and

unconformed had not been there, there would not have been an alternative

for those who are born, made, grown and conformed." It is possible that only

the "conformed" is accessible to thinking. But that does not take away the

all-dominating significance from that antithesis. For in this way only this

"conformed", mortal can be measured always distinctly or silently against

the yardstick of immortality, and in this way, it can be recognised as subject

to law. Even if then a lasting existence withstanding such judgement were no-

where to encounter the paths of thinking.

It is immediately evident that the deepest roots of this fundamental anti-

thesis are in the old Brahman-speculation: in its juxtaposition between the

Imperishable and the world of plurality dominated by death and perishable-

ness. This sphere of concept got now once, together with the ideal of deli-

verance belonging to it, the first place in the minds of the Indian thinkers

from that antiquity, and inner necessity forced them to look at all things and

problems primarily only from this point of view. Has now the conception of

that basic motif gone through the Sāṃkhya-phase right from the beginning,

before the Buddhistic form was reached? Before we can arrive at a judgement

in this respect, we will have first to discuss the latter a little more elaborately.

On the one side, there was a domain of perishableness. It is called the

"world" (loka) or the "orders" (dhammā) and the "conformations" (sam-

khārā). No existence, but a constant state of being born and dying. The

antithesis between being and becoming, of which the Brahmanic speculation

had a notion, but which had not reached a perfectly well-defined formulation

in the most ancient period, at least in the texts available to us, is worked out

here in a distinct clarity. "O Kaccāna, consider this world to be kept in duality

of 'it is' and 'it is not'. But the one, O Kaccāna, who sees in truth and wisdom

how the things originate in the world, for him, there isn't 'it is not' in this

world. The one, O Kaccāna, who sees in truth and wisdom, how the things

perish in this world, for him, there isn't 'it is' in this world." Such disavowal

of 'it is' in the world and its safe shore of quietude expresses the agony of the

Indians by emphasising the changeableness of life in the world. It has always

taken irresistibly the possession of the whole human being. It makes every-

thing, indeed everything, appear to him as "unstable, sorrowful and subject

to change". Becoming as an extintion of the one who has become in re-

peated new deaths:

"All conformations, alas, belongs, alternatingly to birth, to death.

What is born, must perish"—.

A surging ocean, a flaring ocean of flames.

Futile hope that the solidity denied to the material life is to be found in

the realm of the spiritual phenomena. "It would always be better, O disciples,

if a worldling who has not heard the teaching, should consider this body built

out of four elements to be a Self than a soul. And why that? The body built

out of four elements appears to be lasting for one year or two years ... or

hundred years or more. But what is called, O disciples, soul or mind or under-

standing, that comes into existence and perishes, always changing day and

night. Just like an ape in a forest, O disciples, which gads about a thicket,

catches a branch and lets it go and catches another, so also what is called

soul or mind or understanding, O disciples, comes and goes changing day and

night." With a vivid simile of a later Buddhistic writer: "As a wheel of a cart

rolls only around one point of the tyre in movement, it rests only on one point

in resting: so also existence of a living being lasts only as long as a thought

lasts. If a thought has ceased to exist, that means the being has ceased to

exists."

Position with Respect to Ātman

A lasting Self—that Ātman, certainty of all certainties for the thinking of

the ancient period—is not to be found in this activity. "If now, O disciples",

said Buddha, "a Self (attā=skr. ātman) and something belonging to the Self

(attaniya) does not allow itself to be grasped in reality and certainty, then it

is not, O disciples, the belief saying 'this is the world and this is the Self:

I shall become this dying, firm, lasting, eternal, immutable; so I shall last in

eternity'16—Is it not a folly?" "How should it not be? Yes, Sire, it is a

folly."17

We encounter here the much-discussed doctrine of Buddhism. It sur-

prisingly conforms to the modern view. It refuses to speak of a substantial

soul and in whose mental horizon alone the stream of psychic happening

appears—where there is no cogito, but only a cogitatur. This concept was

celebrated—obviously correctly—but I think, striking a false note—as a

combating, eventually as a conquest, of "animism". This was done by extend-

ing the term characterising the animism of profound cultural stages to prin-

ciples as they were cherished by Plato and Leibniz. I think, the Buddhistic

doctrine in question need not be considered here in any way as a result of a

powerfully advancing analysis genially illumining the facts of psychology.

Here it is the question, nothing more and nothing less, of the inevitable

consequence of general basic concept of the exclusive importance of becoming

in this world, and not of being. Only this concept, as one can understand, was

particularly emphasised in the psychic field, because mental factors primarily

came into question for the all-dominating problem of deliverance, and because

the need here to parry contrary opinions was chiefly urgent.

The frightening effect of this perishableness of life in the world does not

find its counterpart and its complement in realising that this life, though

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHISM

197

worthless and luckless, is not without any order. Every movement of every

wave in the ocean of happening follows a definite law. The naming of the

streams flowing along as Dhammā "orders" refers to such a law. So also,

when one speaks of "changeable, conforming, originated in dependence

(upon something else)", it is for the "changeable" to be, essentially, in such

"dependence". We would say, subject to the law of causality.

Dominance of Causality in the World

In this sense, it is normally asked: "On what" is every single phenomenon

"reposing, originating from what, and springing forth from what".18 It is

argued: "If this is, that also is; if this arises, that also arises; if this perishes,

that also perishes." In Buddha's conversation with the most distinguished of

all disciples, so it is told, that the most essential substance of the doctrine is

communicated to him in a sentence then repeated countless number of times

as the briefest confession of faith of Buddhism: "Which orders (dhammā) flow

from a cause, the Perfect One teaches their causes, and which is their

annihilation: this is the doctrine of the great Śramaṇa." A notable step for-

ward in revelation of the chaos of phenomena for enlightenment, regulation

and understanding of thinking.

Just as in the idea of stream of happening, the misery of feeling of plunging

into the world-sorrow is expressed, a hope is aroused in the mind of the

knower in his conviction that this stream is guided in a fixed course by the

law of nature, that he can "cut off this stream by force" that he can release

himself from suffering. A deliverance based upon a laborious investigation of

reality with its concatenation of causes and effects, and upon the decisively

sure intervention at the right point thus ascertained, with the assurance that

the whole long chain of causality will not be able to do anything else but

unfold itself quickly or slowly, to an expected result and no other. Would

one want to tarnish the happiness of this certainty by consideration that an

unalterable necessity decides on it, whether this intervention takes place or

not? And this necessity may eliminate any rescue? One moved indeed by

believing basically in all-dominating causality in the path of a doctrine so

energetically rejected—that the man lacking will-power is led on his way by

destiny and nature (p. 190)—It is understandable that these consequences

were not carried out and the religious thought not led into such self-

destruction.19

The twelve-fold "profound" formula "of profound splendour" on the

"causal nexus of origin" describes the essential progress of the stream that is

to be checked. This is not the place to go into its oft-discussed detail, its difficult

questions which are to be solved.20 The whole can be called as a formula of

the way of the world. "World" is to be understood in that sense in which

Buddha says, "I know no end of suffering, if one has not reached the end of

the world. But I proclaim to you that in this animated body as big as a fathom,

there lives the world, the origin of the world, extinction of the world and the

path to the extinction" of the world." "World" is thus suffering and besides

this, nothing in the world has to signify something for the one in search of

deliverance. And thus this formula describing this world has to be, in fact,

very different from the series of twentyfour principles in Sāṅkhya. Not like

there, the development of the nature from the nature-ground, from the finest

substances to coarse materials—creatures insensitive to joy and sorrow on

their own and affected by suffering only after coming in contact with the

Puruṣa who is standing outside. But here, everything aims directly at the

suffering, only at the suffering. The essence of the series are mental processes,

naturally processes, and not substances. The fateful "ignorance" is on the

top as the deepest root of suffering. Then happenings like contacts between

sense-organs and objects, feeling arising out of them, thirst for desire, grasp-

ing of existence; finally the result: "Old age and death, sorrow and lament,

suffering, grief, despair"—and from there again new re-run of the whole

series. There is nowhere an absolute, but only a concatenation of happening.

The one following the other with a brazen constraint. But for that the annihi-

lation of the one annihilating the other with an unmistakable consoling

certainty. The whole series is fully independent and autonomous not needing

a driving force or a guidance from anything that stands outside it.

Super-mundane Being

Does the Buddhistic thinking acknowledge such an entity standing

outside, something otherworldly, absolute, eternal? A second side of all-

embracing antithesis?

We came across expressions appearing to be affirming this question (p.

193f.). They are of very general nature. As soon as a definite answer is looked

for, it is seen that we stand here before that demarcation line. The Buddhism

strived so seriously and anxiously to keep to this demarcation line between the

knowledge indispensable for deliverance, and the superfluous and disturbing

knowledge.

The older period had concentrated its full power and enthusiasm in look-

ing for otherworldly goal. Everything was dominated by the boldly conceived

idea of this goal. Now the man had become more moderate, cooler, more

prudent. Also the impression of the world-sorrow had become intensified

and deepened. Now the emphasis was not any more on whither, but on

whence: out and away from this suffering. And to eliminate suffering one

knows now to look through the mechanism of causality as necessary and

sufficient, and as we saw, with almost a scientific consistency in which the

progress of thinking, in comparison with the older period, is clearly pro-

nounced. Thus a knowledge keeping itself completely in the realm of the

conditional and the earthly. Even questions can be asked in connection with

this realm. But they are far off from the only direction offered, and therefore,

invite censure. But above all, woe to pertness treading the scene of futile

dialectics which endeavours to fathom the absolute, the super-mundane!

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE UPANIṢADS

THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHISM

199

And soon, it can be recognised in different forms—and this is important

for the formulation of our question—that the Buddhism had not simply

carried out its structure on to those lines and demarcation and stopped there.

The course of events was different. Buddha pulled down the older wing (of

the building) found by him beyond the line of demarcation. He retained only

that which was on this side and shaped it according to his own inclinations.

The information on those strange opinions which juxtaposed the “Self”

and the “world” in a powerful duality (p. 192) has to be counted to some

extent in the facts pointing out to this. And here is really an indefinite symptom

of probability that also the Buddhistic doctrine which appears to be con-

cerned with this “world” alone is based upon a pre-history dominated by the

same antithesis. The constant polemics against too many propositions. So

also the constant brushing off of too many questions. All that characterises

an atmosphere of thinking in which the prohibited problems were the order

of the day. It would be strange, if their rejection by Buddhism should not

point out to an earlier condition in which they were not rejected.

But the course of events we are investigating here is not recognised only in

such polemics against the strange. It has left behind deeper traces in the

structures of thoughts of Buddhism itself.

Deliverance from suffering can be considered as an elimination of a

process causing suffering, or a withdrawal of the sufferer from a contact with

this process. The Sāṃkhya adopted the second path while it lets the spirit

turn away from the nature and enter the purity of its solitude. Buddhism

refused to speak of the pure spirit. As a consequence, it had to choose the

first of the two paths: the suffering arising only in the realm of the nature will

be destroyed within the nature.

This view is expressed, in fact, in the formula of causality. Also the credo

of “four sacred truths”, though it does not give an explicit decision on it,

avoids everything contradicting it.

Let us now consider the following two addresses of Buddha. They belong

to the most famous of his discourses, and they are repeated several times in

the sacred texts.21

After winning over five disciples by his first address Buddha held in

Banares, he led them to holiness and deliverance through his second address

“on the characteristics of non-selfhood (of non-ego)”. He showed that each

of the elements forming the corporeal-spiritual life of a man—corporeality,

feelings, ideas, conformations,22 knowledge—is not the self (attā=ātman).

Otherwise, they would not have been subject to diseases, and the man should

have been able to control them: this should be like this, this should not be

like this. In reality, however, all these elements are unconstant, subject to

suffering, change, and it is known: that is not mine, I am not that, that is not

my self. “One who, therefore, sees this, O disciples, an experienced, noble

listener of the word, turns away from corporeality, turns away from feelings,

idea, conformations, knowledge. While he turns away from them, he will be

free from desire. He gets salvation by giving up desire. The knowledge of

salvation arises in one getting salvation: destroyed is the re-birth, the holy

mutation accomplished, the duty fulfilled; he knows thus that there is no

return to this world.”

“The address on the flames” of the conflagration which Buddha is said to

have given on the mountain of Gayā in the initial period of his influence—as

it was narrated later: in the face of a forest fire that raged on a neighbouring

mountain—in front of thousands of Brahmana ascetics converted by him is

quite similar. “Everything, O disciples, is in flames”, the address begins. The

eye, the visible, the mental processes, based on the contact between the two

are in flames: all that is kindled by the fire of desire, hatred, fascination by

birth, old-age, death and pain. Like the spheres of eyes, those of ears and

all other senses. Knowing this, fear grows in him, of which the earlier address

spoke. There are five groups of elements making up the human existence,

here the senses with their objects and the mental processes belonging to them.

“An experienced, noble listener of the word” becomes weary of all that—the

two addresses agree word by word in description of this phrase—, and he

gets salvation.

Do we not have before us a type signifying rather the removal of the

source of suffering and not the destruction of this source of the two types of

liberation from suffering differentiated above (p. 198) and deviating from the

formula of causality? Does not clearly the idea of an eternal subject appear

here, in its essence alien to perishableness and its ocean of flames? He is not

a fool, but a knower who is described as the one speculating that the perish-

able cannot be the self: thus he makes himself free from it. Can such a battle

and victory be fought and won from the waves of just that unconstant stream

of psychic events alone? Can all the elements playing a role in this description

of becoming free be considered as completely embodied in unfree course of

those phenomena? How could it then happen that the perishableness says to

itself after becoming aware of its perishable nature: “that I am not”, and

turns away from itself? Obviously, some one else is speaking here. A self

knowing what is alien to it in its perishableness, does not, therefore, belong

to this perishableness on its part. Both the addresses describe how it gets

salvation and the knowledge of salvation: as something getting salvation, it

must have escaped perishableness, and then it is unthinkable—what is also

at the same time contradictory to the consciousness of his salvation ascribed

to it—that it would be submerged into nothing.23

The one belonging to this eternal empire is certainly seen here in a shadowy

light. While the sermons eloquently describe worldliness and its sufferings,

they do not elucidate who that is. They allow, so to say, to stage a drama

that remains incomprehensible, as long as he is not accepted as a co-actor,

whatever one may then think of his nature.

The conception already expressed earlier as a consequence of this obvious

transgression of the limits otherwise kept up by the Buddhistic thinking with

respect to the origin of its doctrine: a dualistic system appears clearly here

as a historical primary stage juxtaposing the immortal Ātman with the mortal